Hacker News Reader

Comment by philwebster | Hacker News Reader

Previous discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3958627

This is the polite way of saying 'repost'. Submitter: please put the year in brackets in the future. (in this case [2011])

This is also useful to read the previous discussion and to see whether it has been debunked or there is some additional information. I prefer more information. My favorite format is:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3958627 (516 points, 442 days ago, 234 comments)

I think that, in and of itself, would be a wonderful feature to promote the movement of discourse on a reoccurring subject.

(1)I post something.

(2)We discuss.

(3)After a time(likely a function of the # of stories that get pushed to HN a day), we stop discussion[1].

(4)Someone, after an arbitrary period of time, reposts.

(5)HN automatically moves the older comments over to the newer post[2].

[1]This is not to imply the conversation, has been resolved in any meaningful way, merely that we've elected to move on.

[2]This allows the conversation to grow without much re-treading of the old.

I don't think I've ever submitted anything here but I quite like that format. I wish others would follow it and I certainly will if I ever "repost" any content. Thanks.

It's much more than saying "repost" politely. Just saying "repost" provides practically nothing to the conversation. It's more of a waste of resources than it is useful. However, providing a link to previous conversation is extremely useful. Especially a conversation with so many comments.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com