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by xoa 2 days ago
This is a very brief blog blurb linking the original Tech Radar article that got fairly extensive discussion on HN a week and a half ago [0]. Potentially quite an important one though so a second go around may still be very justified for those who missed it last time. Amidst a lot of negative moves around the net recently it's nice to see some sanity at least once in awhile.

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0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48997221

1 comments

Yeah, please could everyone not pile in and start re-hashing the extensive comments that have already been made only a week and a half ago.

Whatever you're thinking of posting has almost certainly already been said more than once on the original HN discussion.

Perhaps people missed that, and would like to start a new discussion?

It didn't know there was a quota on discussions of any particular topic, perhaps we should give out tickets to the event in the future to ensure no-one misses their opportunity to join the discourse?

> It didn't know there was a quota on discussions of any particular topic

It’s in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#reposts

“Are reposts ok?

If a story has not had significant attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates.”

Alternately, here are comments by moderator dang that mention reposting: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Reposts is one thing, but the person I replied to was gatekeeping the discussion.

If the post is flagged, that does the job of solving that for us, but telling people not to start a discussion on a subject "because we've been there before" is S tier gatekeeping, and that's what I was opposing.

There are some HN commenters that try to do this on a regular basis, either trying to prevent discussion, redirect it or get it moved to another thread

For example,

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ChrisArchitect

It's quite strange to submit something that obviously isn't going to get any discussion, this is a _news aggregator_ not a "discussion aggregator", only to see the same commenter repeatedly leave some asinine comment about "duplication"

This submission is not a "[dupe]" as in "duplicate URL". As one can clearly see here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=remysharp.com

It has not been submitted before

So what's the big deal. If it isn't interesting then it will be ignored, right

As it happens, submissions that cover a topic also covered by other submissions routinely get upvotes and even promoted to page one, as with this one

It is not clear what these "gatekeepers" are hoping to accomplish, but something is getting to them and it probably isn't HN. For example, the previous discussion of this CJEU decision veered off on tangents having nothing to do with the decision. To suggest there is no comment one could make now that was not in the previous thread is laughable. That thread contained almost zero commentary about the decision itself. Perhaps the "gatekeepers" do not like the nature of the commentary they are seeing. Who knows

HN voters, e.g., this submission already has 418 points, and other commenters who have been "touching grass" and are not bothered by the repetitive nature of HN, greatly outnumber these gatekeepers

Neverthless, their quest to quash or redirect discussion for whatever reason, and it's reasonable to question whether it is truly "duplication", may succeed, at least temporarily, as "the squeaky wheel gets the grease"

This submission will probably get ejected from page one soon

But it stands to reason that HN is much more than the noisiest HN commenters

In terms of numbers, maybe something like

HN readers (no account) >> HN users (potential voters) >> HN commenters >> "gatekeepers"

Totally agree. I don't check HN every day, some days I'm too busy, and I don't check on weekends, there are lots of topics I might be interested in, including this one, but missed, including this one, and welcome it coming up again if it's still relevant/ongoing (like this one).

I'd argue, as I think you are, that the repost rule doesn't even really apply here cause as you say, it's not a dupe link, AND it adds commentary.

Sometimes reposts get the attention of the second-chance pool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

I had one such post that deserved comments but didn't get any, then someone reposted it and dang put the original back into the pool.

Is this StackOverflow now, where it's forbidden to discuss something if someone else had a similar discussion before?
Ever I'd hope not, but it would make sense to check if a discussion was already started a week ago and add to it rather than start separate ones constantly for each new piece of news - but not as a strict requirement, just an ask. After enough time there tends to be additional development/information which makes using the old conversations useless.
For most of the people on this board, they'd do better to spend that time touching grass as opposed to searching for something that people might have talked about anywhere from 1min - 365+ days ago.
Part StackOverflow, part Reddit ... it's getting dicey around here.
Gatekeeping through the voting system is preferable to gatekeeping by random comments, if you feel you must gatekeep.
Yeah I'd hate for multiple comments re-hashing the exact same comments that people already made before, but sometimes there's value in it...I'm sure you'd agree?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49109440#49109857

Is it even preferable to necro an 8-day old topic? New developments are going to lead to new talking points, right?

With due the greatest respect: it is not up to you to decide on what others deem worthy of commenting or not.
Let’s dig through your comment history and apply the same standard.
Very odd take. Let's not discourage open discussion. I've not seen whatever original HN thread you're referring to.