Tell Dang:Joining repeated submissions of same URL by same user target for abuse | Hacker News Reader

Tell Dang:Joining repeated submissions of same URL by same user target for abuse

1 pointWalterGR10 comments

Hi Dang.

I've noticed that repeated submissions of the same URL by the same user will be joined into a single submission. They will be rolled up into the most recent submission, and carry the timestamp of that submission. Presumably this is meant to avoid accidental, honest duplicate submissions - for example, submitting the same URL again to correct the title. (Is a certain level of karma needed to edit submitted titles?)

However, this joining happens even if those URLs are submitted hours (even days?) apart. It's becoming a target of abuse by users who continually submit rabble-rousing - though perhaps not strictly off-topic - content. It makes it impossible to see when users are submitting such content over and over again until it gets traction.

Also, do flags transfer to the newest submission?

I'm posting this as a self-post rather than emailing you so that others will become aware of this functionality.

Thanks.

I don't think the flags transfer, as I've flagged a few duplicate (within minutes) submissions by the same user lately.

Some people submit and delete the post, that is against the instructions in the FAQ

> Please don't delete and repost the same story. Deletion is for things that shouldn't have been submitted in the first place.

Do you remember any recent case with a lot of deletions and repost?

How long do you have to delete a submission?

Probably 1 or 2 hours. (???)

Okay then that’s not what this is. It’s not people deleting and re-submitting, it’s people submitting hours (or even day(s)?) apart and the submissions getting joined.

It's very weird, but I didn't notice. I'll try to keep looking for it.

Have you contacted dang? Sometimes they make experiments with new features and sometime they produce unexpected consequences.

Have you contacted dang?

Not yet. I had hoped that dang would be alerted upon posts containing his name in the title. :)

Me too. That’s been my intuitive feeling, but since the consequences of flagging aren’t visible (at least at my karma level?) - who knows?

Are you sure that the previous submission are not dead? (Do you have "showdead" enabled in your profile?)

Yes and yes.

I’ll try to find an example - but it’s difficult. Since the older submissions get silently rolled up, the only way to detect multiple submissions is to use an outside resource that’s captured the previous submission(s), such as Archive.org or HN’s search at https://hn.algolia.com/ .

(Algolia only indexes the most-recent rolled-up submission, but it doesn’t update its index immediately, so you can sometimes catch (only a single, it would seem) older submission(s) that have since been rolled-up...)

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