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That usually means the community isn't interested. Just because you believe it should be on the front page is not a justification for posting duplicates :)

programLyrique 11y ago
Well, it seems to have arrived on the front page now, so it might also be a question of timing...
- colmvp 11y ago
  Exactly. Stories posted on HN/Reddit are clearly influenced by timing and title.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- ams6110 11y ago
  And now it's gone... too controversial, apparently?
ScottBurson 11y ago
Just because you believe it should be on the front page is not a justification for posting duplicates I think it is, actually. I've seen stories take three or four tries to hit the front page -- at which point they get quite a lot of attention; there's no doubt they were HN material. I think all frequent HN readers should contribute some time curating new stories -- don't spend all your time on the front page. If more people did this, maybe good stories wouldn't need multiple postings so often -- making the front page would be less accidental.
- iLoch 11y ago
  Indeed. I'd like to see a split view on the home page - top articles on the left, new on the right. Probably bad UX but often times I come here and look at what's directly in my line of sight - clicking on a different section of the site is usually not my primary use case on HN.
- mistermann 11y ago
  > I think all frequent HN readers should contribute some time curating new stories I might do this if there were separate buttons for "upvote" and "save". As it is, I don't want to pollute my saved page with excess bulk.
  - dang 11y ago
    We're open to decoupling 'upvote' from 'save', but what would the interface for 'save' be? I'm loath to just keep adding links for everything.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Forget buttons on the saved stories page? It would be nice to be able to forget saved comments too.
      - dang 11y ago
        Clever. But you'd still have to upvote something in order to save it, and people we hear from about this mostly want the two decoupled.
    - waterlesscloud 11y ago
      I don't care about comments, but I'm definitely in favor of saving and upvoting being different for stories. Each story on New already has 4 or 5 links, depending on how you count. What's one more?
      - dang 11y ago
        > What's one more? The path to perdition.
        ScottBurson 11y ago
        I think separate buttons would be nice. The set of stories and comments I want to be able to refer back to is a relatively small fraction of the set I want to upvote. Of course it also means another database table, or equivalent, in the back end.
dang 11y ago
Your argument assumes that once a story has appeared once or twice, the community has probably seen enough of it for lack of votes to count as a consensus. That's a natural assumption, but false: it overestimates how much attention /newest gets and underestimates the impact of randomness. When I became public as moderator I heard from a lot of users (e.g. [1]) that the biggest problem with HN was high-quality stories not making it to the front page. At first I was skeptical. I was looking at /newest a lot as a moderator and hadn't been noticing much good stuff on the cutting room floor. But the users saying this were good, observant HNers, and I kept hearing it, and it got me worried. So I started looking at /newest more systematically, and then I was shocked. Not only were many high-quality stories being overlooked, probably most of the finest submissions—the out-of-the-way, intellectually interesting, totally unexpected submissions that make for the best of HN—were getting ignored. I'm still not sure how I could have missed that; I must have been looking at /newest at least as much as anybody. Since last summer, we've put a lot of effort into addressing this. One simple thing we did was clarify that a few reposts are ok if a story hasn't had significant attention yet [2]. That's why it's ok that nkurz reposted this one. ScottBurson hit the nail on the head, I think: giving good stories multiple cracks at the bat is one way to counteract the randomness of what gets traction here. Sometimes people abuse it, e.g. by reposting things that don't belong on HN or by being overly promotional, but those are fairly easy problems to solve and their cost is much smaller than the benefit of having more substantive stories—especially those out-of-the-way gems—on the front page. The above isn't an opinion about the current article, which I haven't read, but it's clear that nkurz reposted it for the right reason, which is that he thinks it's intellectually interesting and well-written. That's the kind of thing we want users to do. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494367 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- DrScump 11y ago
  But this runs in direct opposition to the title-matching rejection algorithm that is in place. (If posters preserve an article title properly, their attempts to repost are intercepted and redirected to the predecessor.) If it is intended that duplicates be allowed, then perhaps the discussion threads for such duplicates should be merged together, rather than getting such posters in the habit of not honoring original titles.
bootload 11y ago
"That usually means the community isn't interested. " Maybe, could also be because the newest stack is broken. Submissions are furiously added, yet few stories are selected off the stack, leaving new submissions to drop off and disappear. Good on you @nkurz for re-posting.
liyanage 11y ago
I'm glad he did. I missed it the first two times, saw this third submission, read the great article and upvoted it.
JesperRavn 11y ago
If you think the story is inappropriate you can also flag it.
- DrScump 11y ago
  Not every reader has the flag option available. Also, there should be a distinction between "I'm flagging because this content does not belong or is spam" versus "I'm flagging because this is the 8th copy of it in the 50 most recent postings."
enraged_camel 11y ago
>>That usually means the community isn't interested. No it doesn't. Stories rarely stay on the front page for more than 24 hours. This means that it's very easy to miss great articles if you don't visit HN for a day or two.

programLyrique 11y ago

Well, it seems to have arrived on the front page now, so it might also be a question of timing...

colmvp 11y ago
Exactly. Stories posted on HN/Reddit are clearly influenced by timing and title.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ams6110 11y ago
And now it's gone... too controversial, apparently?

ScottBurson 11y ago

Just because you believe it should be on the front page is not a justification for posting duplicates I think it is, actually. I've seen stories take three or four tries to hit the front page -- at which point they get quite a lot of attention; there's no doubt they were HN material. I think all frequent HN readers should contribute some time curating new stories -- don't spend all your time on the front page. If more people did this, maybe good stories wouldn't need multiple postings so often -- making the front page would be less accidental.

iLoch 11y ago
Indeed. I'd like to see a split view on the home page - top articles on the left, new on the right. Probably bad UX but often times I come here and look at what's directly in my line of sight - clicking on a different section of the site is usually not my primary use case on HN.
mistermann 11y ago
> I think all frequent HN readers should contribute some time curating new stories I might do this if there were separate buttons for "upvote" and "save". As it is, I don't want to pollute my saved page with excess bulk.
- dang 11y ago
  We're open to decoupling 'upvote' from 'save', but what would the interface for 'save' be? I'm loath to just keep adding links for everything.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Forget buttons on the saved stories page? It would be nice to be able to forget saved comments too.
    - dang 11y ago
      Clever. But you'd still have to upvote something in order to save it, and people we hear from about this mostly want the two decoupled.
  - waterlesscloud 11y ago
    I don't care about comments, but I'm definitely in favor of saving and upvoting being different for stories. Each story on New already has 4 or 5 links, depending on how you count. What's one more?
    - dang 11y ago
      > What's one more? The path to perdition.
      - ScottBurson 11y ago
        I think separate buttons would be nice. The set of stories and comments I want to be able to refer back to is a relatively small fraction of the set I want to upvote. Of course it also means another database table, or equivalent, in the back end.

dang 11y ago

Your argument assumes that once a story has appeared once or twice, the community has probably seen enough of it for lack of votes to count as a consensus. That's a natural assumption, but false: it overestimates how much attention /newest gets and underestimates the impact of randomness. When I became public as moderator I heard from a lot of users (e.g. [1]) that the biggest problem with HN was high-quality stories not making it to the front page. At first I was skeptical. I was looking at /newest a lot as a moderator and hadn't been noticing much good stuff on the cutting room floor. But the users saying this were good, observant HNers, and I kept hearing it, and it got me worried. So I started looking at /newest more systematically, and then I was shocked. Not only were many high-quality stories being overlooked, probably most of the finest submissions—the out-of-the-way, intellectually interesting, totally unexpected submissions that make for the best of HN—were getting ignored. I'm still not sure how I could have missed that; I must have been looking at /newest at least as much as anybody. Since last summer, we've put a lot of effort into addressing this. One simple thing we did was clarify that a few reposts are ok if a story hasn't had significant attention yet [2]. That's why it's ok that nkurz reposted this one. ScottBurson hit the nail on the head, I think: giving good stories multiple cracks at the bat is one way to counteract the randomness of what gets traction here. Sometimes people abuse it, e.g. by reposting things that don't belong on HN or by being overly promotional, but those are fairly easy problems to solve and their cost is much smaller than the benefit of having more substantive stories—especially those out-of-the-way gems—on the front page. The above isn't an opinion about the current article, which I haven't read, but it's clear that nkurz reposted it for the right reason, which is that he thinks it's intellectually interesting and well-written. That's the kind of thing we want users to do. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7494367 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

DrScump 11y ago
But this runs in direct opposition to the title-matching rejection algorithm that is in place. (If posters preserve an article title properly, their attempts to repost are intercepted and redirected to the predecessor.) If it is intended that duplicates be allowed, then perhaps the discussion threads for such duplicates should be merged together, rather than getting such posters in the habit of not honoring original titles.

bootload 11y ago

"That usually means the community isn't interested. " Maybe, could also be because the newest stack is broken. Submissions are furiously added, yet few stories are selected off the stack, leaving new submissions to drop off and disappear. Good on you @nkurz for re-posting.

liyanage 11y ago

I'm glad he did. I missed it the first two times, saw this third submission, read the great article and upvoted it.

JesperRavn 11y ago

If you think the story is inappropriate you can also flag it.

DrScump 11y ago
Not every reader has the flag option available. Also, there should be a distinction between "I'm flagging because this content does not belong or is spam" versus "I'm flagging because this is the 8th copy of it in the 50 most recent postings."

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>That usually means the community isn't interested. No it doesn't. Stories rarely stay on the front page for more than 24 hours. This means that it's very easy to miss great articles if you don't visit HN for a day or two.