Because the goal of the site is things of intellectual curiosity and repetitive things are not that. Repeated stories are usually duped off the front page and m

Because the goal of the site is things of intellectual curiosity and repetitive things are not that. Repeated stories are usually duped off the front page and meta about votes is far, far more repetitive than the occasional story dupe or story that's not interesting to some person or another. It would absolutely eat the place alive. If you're interested, though, there is years upon years of moderator and user commentary on this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=author%3Adang%20downvotes&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...