I was aware of that. That's why I didn't flag the duplicates.
My purpose in providing back links on each duplicate to the earlier posts was to try to avoid fragmenting the comments. When there are two submissions 18 minutes apart, there is a decent chance comments will be split between them.
> If we see a good-by-HN's-standard story that fell through the cracks, we've been emailing the submitters and inviting them to repost it. We invited coloneltcb to repost this one
That seems pretty inelegant for a site named "Hacker News". Why can't you diddle the database to give the original another shot? The "invite a resubmission" approach makes the submitter have to figure out a different URL, and increases the risk of comment fragmentation.
I don't think we need worry about comment fragmentation on posts that have few points and no comments and are more than a few hours old. The odds of new comments appearing there are minuscule. On live threads, yes, but we often move those [1].
We do give originals another shot, by rolling the clock back on them internally, if they're up to a few hours old. Beyond that, it feels weird to have a story on the front page with just a few points and a timestamp that says e.g. "23 hours ago", let alone "163 days ago".
We don't change the user-facing timestamp, because that feels like rewriting history, the sort of thing that HN users wouldn't like. It would also make /newest look weird as neighboring posts could then have different ages.
The repost invites don't require users to come up with a different URL. You click on a link and the software fills that in for you.
Probably our next step will be to add a setting to user profiles that people can turn on if they want the software to do such reposts for them automatically. In that case, no need for an email, plus the software could pick a good time to do the repost. On the other hand, it's already clear that many users like getting these emails. The positive feedback has been striking.
An open question is what to do in cases where the submitter has no email address in their profile, or doesn't check their email.
If you or anyone knows of a more elegant solution, please tell us! We would love that.
My purpose in providing back links on each duplicate to the earlier posts was to try to avoid fragmenting the comments. When there are two submissions 18 minutes apart, there is a decent chance comments will be split between them.
> If we see a good-by-HN's-standard story that fell through the cracks, we've been emailing the submitters and inviting them to repost it. We invited coloneltcb to repost this one
That seems pretty inelegant for a site named "Hacker News". Why can't you diddle the database to give the original another shot? The "invite a resubmission" approach makes the submitter have to figure out a different URL, and increases the risk of comment fragmentation.