And an auto-repost feature. I still don't understand the difference, I think it depends who "rescues" the article (dang or unnamed power users).
First I've heard of auto-repost. Is this documented somewhere? Is there evidence that it exists?
If by auto-repost you mean when we email someone inviting them to repost a story, it's exactly the same thing as the second-chance pool except for a technical difference: if the submission is less than 2-3 days old, we re-up it; if it's older than that, we email a repost invite.
Thanks! I always assumed there was a bigger difference between "you mail me" and "you simple repost", but it makes sense that the time elapsed is a factor.
It was originally a factor for purely internal reasons—whether a story is kept in RAM or not—but I think it actually makes sense to keep.