Comment by gambiter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gambiter | Hacker News Reader

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Thank you for your reply. While you said my comment wasn't especially negative, I understand that the first sentence could have been taken that way, and that's probably the reason for the downvotes. It's just that I've seen people yelling 'DUPE' since the first year of Slashdot, and it seems like every site has some who make it their personal mission to rain on OP's parade.

I love the idea of stopping the 'split discussion' issue, but I feel like it's at odds with a site like HN where stories fall off of the front page so quickly. I'm not able to read it all day long, and I rarely look at it in the evenings. Especially when we have articles about potential gaming of the article positions, it seems unrealistic to expect that you would have a chance to actually get the real 'news' at any given point without duplicate posts.

What I mean is, there are certainly more than 30 in-progress topics appealing to HN readers. If I look at the front page in the morning and again in the afternoon, I'm only going to get a small subset of the topics that are out there. That's why I appreciate duplicates so much... it's really the only thing that makes a site like HN relevant to the occasional reader.

Anyway, thanks for supporting me even though I wasn't the most ambassadorial. :)

You make a fair point about duplicates. There used to be a second-hand clothes store in my home town called "New to You". Similarly, if you haven't seen a story, it isn't a dupe.

The problem is that the HN front page only has 30 slots. Those slots are the scarcest resource on the site. Since we have no way of knowing what you've seen, we have to target overall coverage.

We don't treat stories as dupes just because they've been posted already; they have to have had significant discussion. But I get that you're talking about precisely those stories. I do think we have more work to do here.

In the meantime, one thing thing you can do is look at https://news.ycombinator.com/active and https://news.ycombinator.com/best for major discussions you missed.

I appreciate you considering the point! I can imagine it being a difficult thing to solve.

For now, thank you SO MUCH for mentioning /active and /best. I had no idea those existed, and they are exactly what I need.

Just happened to catch your comment in passing, so I'll reply quickly.

It's true that things fall off the front page quickly, but that's why there's a "More" link. It doesn't take long to click through, scan the headlines, and check on the ones that look interesting.

It's also true that things wouldn't fall off the front page if there weren't so many duplications! It's less of a problem now, but I remember occasions when several of the front page submissions were all about the same thing, each with their own conversation, and preventing other topics from making it.

And as you say, at any given moment there are likely to be more than 30 "in progress" topics in the tech world, so the only solution is clicking through to see those items ranked 31 to 60, and 61 to 90. There is nothing else you can do. In part that's why I think it's important and relevant to link related conversations/submissions. Duplications will happen, items will fall off (or never make) the front page, so the best we can hope for is coherent discussions.

Hope that makes things clearer. Now I'm off to do some work. Cheers.

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