[antonymoose]

Dumb Question: Why do you do what you do and or are you a bot? If the latter, why doesn’t HN just automate this?

[tomhow]

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46867700 and marked it off topic.

[gundmc]

In this case it's not a direct duplicate of the link, but another post on the same topic. I find there is value in reading through the previous discussion that I may not have otherwise seen.

[Brajeshwar]

LOL! I also found that our dear friend ChrisArchitect, sees them (maybe s/he uses a tool), and I just refer to them to see duplicates I might have missed/submitted. I see no harm, and it is a thankless job. We also know that sometimes duplicates are the only way to resurface interesting and curious articles.

[tokyobreakfast]

I've seen this account dupe-post twice on a story that was flagged, then later vouched.

Which is a telling bug for a bot to have.

[mulmen]

HN does dedupe on a timer. If it has been a little while reposts are allowed to get a chance of reaching new eyeballs.

[Fezzik]

It’s a common HN practice. I’ve done it once or twice. Mods will do it often, especially with highly active topics. I imagine it started as a method to avoid duplicate posting thereby consolidating conversation and, also, so that karma attribution goes to whoever the original poster was.

I imagine automation would be difficult because the same topics come from different sources and occasionally there is additional/novel information in similarly titled postings.

[wincy]

Also important to note there is a time eventually that something is no longer a dupe, and people will still add previous discussions about it (often dang himself), because the previous conversations about the topic may be of interest. But unless some earth shattering research just came out in the last three days showing that lead is good for us, actually, it hasn’t been long enough for that to apply here.