To me, the value of merging stories would be in uncluttering the front page and keeping the comments together; an "ask" post does neither. That said, merging s

To me, the value of merging stories would be in uncluttering the front page and keeping the comments together; an "ask" post does neither. That said, merging stories in the above way would be tremendously useful. Then again, more people only upvoting one "canonical" story would also help - after all, yet another article isn't terribly valuable.