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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

Discussed at the time (in 2016, not the 14th century): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12405810

Hey dang, thanks for pointing that out.

I'll take the opportunity for two quick comments:

1) When posting a link, it would be useful if HN would tell me that it has already been posted - besides what already happens when someone posted it recently.

2) Is there a guideline on how frequently can something be posted and discussed, and what's an "appropriate" time to wait before reposting something that has already been discussed in the past?

Thanks!

Yes, it's in the FAQ:

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

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

Thanks!

The problem though is that if I post frequently, it would be very useful to know that what I am posting is a repost. Do you think this is a feature that could be implemented?

If the URL is the same, no new submission is created, but you're redirected to the former submission (and that gets an upvote, I think).

Every now and then you also get "This story has been previously submitted". No idea when exactly, but it seems to be a newer development.

This is not foolproof, of course, many articles are reachable from many URLs, especially if some social media tracking thing is embedded.

I would add that nowadays a number of URL's have some parts "variable" at the end and so searching for "your" URL might not give results (but a previous submission with the same "main" URL but a different suffix does exist nonetheless).

We could match on exact URL but that would only catch some of the reposts. After that, it gets hard very quickly. It's best to got to HN search and plug in some keywords to see if the topic has had major attention before. You can use "comments>N" to get threads that had at least N comments, and similarly "points>N".

> You can use "comments>N" to get threads that had at least N comments, and similarly "points>N".

This is super useful. Thanks!

A good idea is to search for the URL before submitting, BUT see below.

Interestingly it’s “the 13th Century” there (and in the url).

Probably atlasobscura silently changed(/fixed?) it: https://web.archive.org/web/20160830171522/https://www.atlas... vs https://web.archive.org/web/20160901120029/https://www.atlas...

I noticed that too. I'm glad they care about getting their centuries straight.

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