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I don't have a horse in this race but I could imagine a whole litany of reasons for one post doing better over another which have nothing to do with the title.

I don't have a horse in this race but I could imagine a whole litany of reasons for one post doing better over another which have nothing to do with the title. Again, not trying to say one title is better than the other just that the argument given of "this post is doing better; therefore, the title is better" seems fallacious with so many potential confounding variables.

lolinder 2y ago
Fair. It's possible it's causal, but yes, not a guarantee. The context and subtext you're missing is that OP gets on every article that was posted more than once to point to previous postings, identifying the new one as a "dupe". They seem to be of the opinion that each thread should exist exactly once (or, grudgingly, once per year). I responded because in that context they seemed to be implying that OP changed the title to avoid getting flagged as a duplicate, so I was explaining why that is unlikely—the portion of the title they used is just better for this audience. More generally, to me this is to me a classic example of why their idea of thread purity is wrong: the thread the other day did very poorly, whereas this thread reached a much wider audience. I don't really care why that was, but it's yet more proof that reposts are a good thing when the previous post fails to garner "significant attention". [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
  Ah, I did miss the subtext. I've noticed the [Dupe] comments on many threads and, to be fair, they're warranted most of the time I see them. As in, the same news was submitted multiple times within an hour of each submission and they're all getting a split discussion. It's worth noting that dang will usually combine the threads and leave a comment in the now-empty section with a link to the "winning" thread (heh, full circle, sometimes the agree-ability of the title is what decides the "winner"). Anyway, back to the subtext, I agree that the repost seems to be warranted in this instance given the lack of discussion on the first post and presumably no "second chance" boost.

lolinder 2y ago

Fair. It's possible it's causal, but yes, not a guarantee. The context and subtext you're missing is that OP gets on every article that was posted more than once to point to previous postings, identifying the new one as a "dupe". They seem to be of the opinion that each thread should exist exactly once (or, grudgingly, once per year). I responded because in that context they seemed to be implying that OP changed the title to avoid getting flagged as a duplicate, so I was explaining why that is unlikely—the portion of the title they used is just better for this audience. More generally, to me this is to me a classic example of why their idea of thread purity is wrong: the thread the other day did very poorly, whereas this thread reached a much wider audience. I don't really care why that was, but it's yet more proof that reposts are a good thing when the previous post fails to garner "significant attention". [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2y ago
Ah, I did miss the subtext. I've noticed the [Dupe] comments on many threads and, to be fair, they're warranted most of the time I see them. As in, the same news was submitted multiple times within an hour of each submission and they're all getting a split discussion. It's worth noting that dang will usually combine the threads and leave a comment in the now-empty section with a link to the "winning" thread (heh, full circle, sometimes the agree-ability of the title is what decides the "winner"). Anyway, back to the subtext, I agree that the repost seems to be warranted in this instance given the lack of discussion on the first post and presumably no "second chance" boost.