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I suspect that people occasionally use the simplicity of the URL detector as a feature, deliberately changing the URL in trivial ways so they can submit items t
by RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago
I suspect that people occasionally use the simplicity of the URL detector as a feature, deliberately changing the URL in trivial ways so they can submit items they know or suspect will be popular.
More often, though, people just don't check at all and submit items with no checking at all. This leads to duplicate submissions, a crowded "New" page, and split disussions.
I just wish people would read more, so they'd have a chance of knowing that the cool thing they've just seen and want to submit has already been submitted, sometimes many times over. The Dup Detector is sufficiently simply (for which read "brain-dead") that it can't be relied on.
ADDED IN EDIT: Cool! A down-vote! I always appreciate the opportunity to learn something. If you've down-voted this, or have a reason why someone might, please reply with more explanation so I can understand the alternative point of view. Thanks.
- jacquesm 16y ago> A down-vote! Your first I gather :) ? Fixed.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y ago>> A down-vote! > Your first I gather :) ? <grin> You know me better than that. I just always find it frustrating when I submit something or say something that I genuinely believe adds value to the site, and then it gets down-voted with no explanation. A down-vote will make me re-evaluate the information content, and sometimes I will, upon reflection, delete a comment. If it was content-less then I'll move on, but if I thought there was content, I'll try to rephrase and be clearer and more positive. But when I think a comment has value and yet it gets a down-vote with no explanation, I find that frustrating. It happens, I know, and it's no big deal, but I value the opportunity to learn. > Fixed. Thanks, although it doesn't explain why someone thought it was worth the down-vote in the first place. <fx: sigh> Never mind, moving on ...
- jacquesm 16y agoI know. One thing you can do to combat this is to revisit discussions after they've died down and check out the negative comments, see if there were any 'drive-by's' that could do with a re-balancing of the force.
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoOne side-effect of the duplicate-detection I do is that I re-read old discussions. That lets me up-vote older comments that I think deserve it. I've found some gems like that, which in part is why I continue the dup-detector activity "by hand" (in the main). And thanks for the up-vote.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoThanks for the reply. I agree that not everyone has time to read every new submission, a problem only made worse by the same story being submitted repeatedly. I agree that there are many ways for resubmissions to be accidental, and I'd like to see a mechanism for helping to reduce the problem. Apologies for being somewhat "whiney" - I find it hard to be unremittingly positive about something that seriously irritates me. I know, I am somewhat OCD about it. And finally, I appreciate your comment about it being meta, but there's nowhere else to generate conversation about how to make HN better. The "Feature Suggestion" page doesn't generate discussion or ideas because it appears to be write-only for the general audience. And I don't mind the down-votes, I just appreciate the opportunity to learn from them. So thanks again. ADDED IN EDIT: I guess you deleted the comment because you felt it was a bit whiney and meta. I found it useful.
- wladimir 16y agoIMO, a good way to make this less frequent would be to add a 'suggest' feature for similar URLs: When someone submits a URL (or title?) what is very close, but not equal to another that has been submitted recently, warn the user. Allow him to continue anyway with an extra click when none matches.