@dang what happened to this post? It was at the top like 30 mins ago and now it seems shadow-banned.
Whistleblower details how DOGE may have taken sensitive NLRB data – https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43691142
1139 points/7 days ago/528 comments
In this case, the answers appear to be yes, it's substantively the same story, and no, it can't support a substantively different discussion than the previous major thread. That's why we'd treat the follow-up submission as a dupe.
This is in no way passing judgment about the importance of the story! It's just that if we weren't careful and proactive about moderating HN in this way, the frontpage would rapidly fill up with variations on the hottest stories of the moment, and avoiding repetition is a core principle here (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).
I wrote a long explanation about exactly this the other day—if you (or anyone) is willing to take a look at that (assuming you have the stamina) and still have a question that isn't already answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.
p.s. The current case is unfortunate because the follow-up/duplicate post came a week later than the original thread. If it were hours later, or a day or two later, as is more typical, we would merge the threads and in this way avoid a split discussion. But 7 days is too wide a chasm to merge across.
I'm not opposed to this rule for moderation, and I understand the reasoning behind it. But it seems like we're just watching the country burn and when stories like this get suppressed to make room for a new rust package manager, it makes me all nihilistic.
/rant
For sure it can, if and when significant new information arises. That's the main point of the principles outlined at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43738815.
But yes, I hear you and I know it's frustrating. There's no important topic that HN really does justice to.
Dang (and earlier pg and sctb, and now I suspect tomhow) often express frustrations with the HN community's collective behaviour (a recent example: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43477305>). A key consideration is the fragility of the community and service itself (socially, not technically), as evidenced by, say, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23047709>, and even more revealingly here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22805993>.
Your argument is likely not with their beliefs or preferences, but the embodied practices of HN moderation. Which can themselves be problematic as they have a strong status quo bias, as I've pointed out repeatedly:
<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>.
Which often manifests as tone policing, as again I've commented (some overlap with above search):
<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...>
Consider reversing that bias a hacking challenge.