One of the downsides of simply merging items, with different URLs, is that the different articles might both be worth posting because they cover different aspec

One of the downsides of simply merging items, with different URLs, is that the different articles might both be worth posting because they cover different aspects of a story. So it'd be great to see multiple URLs on one item. Also, there'd have to be a pretty clear standard about what constitutes one item. Sure, same URL - same item. Probably different URLs for the same story on the same day should be one item. But in the AirBNB ransacking case, I'd argue there should have been multiple articles: one for the initial "This is what happened" blog post and one for the "Suspect in custody, AirBNB has made changes to their organization" followup. Edited to add: And another for todays posting, noting that AirBNB probably hasn't done enough for the victim. I assume some people blindly post TechCrunch URLs to try to boost karma - so a karma based solution might work. You post a duplicate URL, it changes your karma by -1 or 0. Not enough of a karma hit to really change the overall karma, but perhaps enough to search for the article first.