4 ms·

I think if you make it an initiative for the submitters to submit the lowest common demoninator, we would rid ourselves of the duplications. I have to believe

I think if you make it an initiative for the submitters to submit the lowest common demoninator, we would rid ourselves of the duplications. I have to believe everyone on Hacker News knows how URLs work and can see that something like this: ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29 is not needed as part of the submission URL. And to cover all basis, if you don't know if it is needed try it before you submit it to HN. Delete the above portion of the URL, hit enter and if you still get the same webpage you have done your due diligence. Finding a correct algorithim for this might be tough, but if we put the pressure on the submitters themselves we might get something done.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
Well, case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012670 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012670 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012341 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012341 The lunk to items have the same title, but the URLs are different becuase of the extra, unnecessary parameters. The extra check would have prevented the duplication. But if you put the onus on the submitter, it won't change. After all, two of the recent duplications were duplicates of items on the front page, not even obscure ones. There's no penalty for people who don't bother. Automated checking goes a long way. The only way you'll get people to do the checking before they submit is if there's a penalty. Perhaps duplicated items should cause a loss of karma. Pretty draconian when we want good items. People might stop bothering. Checking the title seems easy to implement, gain a lot, and then we can see if the problem/situation remains. And I think this is a problem, because sometimes the discussion can get diluted across multiple submissions, leading to duplication, which is a waste of time and effort. As a hacker, I resent that.

RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago

Well, case in point: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012670 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012670 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012341 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012341 The lunk to items have the same title, but the URLs are different becuase of the extra, unnecessary parameters. The extra check would have prevented the duplication. But if you put the onus on the submitter, it won't change. After all, two of the recent duplications were duplicates of items on the front page, not even obscure ones. There's no penalty for people who don't bother. Automated checking goes a long way. The only way you'll get people to do the checking before they submit is if there's a penalty. Perhaps duplicated items should cause a loss of karma. Pretty draconian when we want good items. People might stop bothering. Checking the title seems easy to implement, gain a lot, and then we can see if the problem/situation remains. And I think this is a problem, because sometimes the discussion can get diluted across multiple submissions, leading to duplication, which is a waste of time and effort. As a hacker, I resent that.