Looking into it now. Edit: hopefully fixed now. Will edit this comment later when we figure out what happened.
Ok, we figured out what happened. A background process that is upgrading old stories to a new data format went rogue and made multiple copies of a few stories in memory. Apparently it agrees with some of you that HN could use more stories about Go.
I notice that one submission is "canonical" for the flag/unflag bit. You can flag one of the two submissions, and the "unflag" will show up on the other submission.
They've caused me so many headaches over the years it's amazing to me that they are still actively supported and implemented in any software. What value do they even bring?
When the double point/reply relationship ended, the comments sections also diverged. This is how it looked while the comments were still identical: http://tinypic.com/r/vn2u0i/8
Ok, we figured out what happened. A background process that is upgrading old stories to a new data format went rogue and made multiple copies of a few stories in memory. Apparently it agrees with some of you that HN could use more stories about Go.
Sorry for the error.