The very fact that links are appearing on the front page means that a lot of people haven't seen them yet. It means that they got some utility out of reading th

The very fact that links are appearing on the front page means that a lot of people haven't seen them yet. It means that they got some utility out of reading them, and it means that they thought others would too. Assuming the theory works. People may upvote for a number of reasons, not necessarily because they received value from the link. There remains a lot of work to do in the unexplored space of social, user-powered spaces like Reddit and HN. In theory, the upvote/downvote method maximizes utility of the site users, because those who received value from the article upvoted. Unfortunately, what maximizes utility for one set of users isn't the same for others, which is why we can have such a diversity of sites like HN, Reddit, and Digg. HN has established itself as a high quality, technically and entrepreneurially oriented site, which is why we don't see the same content as say, reddit.com/r/funny. Defending this position by submitting and upvoting high quality links is critical to maintaining the caliber of HN. This is part of why I don't like seeing resubmitted or duplicate content. Duplicate content (even if very high quality) still takes up a valuable front page location. If enough of the community received new value from the piece (ie. haven't seen it before), then they can upvote it and the article can stay. On the other hand, if you upvote something you've already seen for the benefit of others, you aren't necessarily helping them out. Instead, you are tampering with the ranking algorithm. If enough new users see an old article and upvote it, then the utility for the aggregate user is maximized, and I am happy with duplicate content when this happens, even if I'm not receiving any value. Still, there is the problem of users new and old not seeing or knowing about these great quality articles from years ago. Inevitably someone will see an old repost and say "I didn't see this the first time around. I'm glad it was reposted." However, I think using a site like HN to get these old articles new life is using the wrong tool to solve the problem.