

Ask YC: Duplicate Posts - izak30

Ok folks,<p>I'm pretty tired of people complaining about dupes that are more than a couple of days apart.<p>Discussions change, perspectives change.  There is serious value in re-asking a question 2,4,10 weeks out.  I've even considered re-asking my own questions before.<p>While it is nice to have a listing of posts that have talked about something before, please don't patronize people who do ask questions that have been asked here before.<p>So, my question:<p>Can we specify some civil way of 
1)Telling someone their post is a dupe
2)Pointing out that search options do exist
3)Continuing on with their discussion and anwering their question as asked.<p>Thoughts?
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zacharye
Perhaps we should try to convince pg to add a link to searchyc.com in the top
menu?

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iamdave
Someone posts a dupe, I post a link to the first article and like magic, it
disappears.

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mechanical_fish
That always seemed polite enough to me.

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gtani
in addition to searchyc, there's xirium , Goog custom search

[http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=018342486690831005521:1iq2...](http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=018342486690831005521:1iq2wypqs7c)

<http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/>

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gtani
oh, yea, how about putting up a FAQ wiki somewhere?

Here's some basic categories:

\- what programming language should i start / learn next?

\- what editor, VCS, bug tracker

\- what profilers /debuggers / unit testing / BDD shd i use?

\- how do i deal with RSI/ wrist pain / eye strain?

\- what hosts / colo / DNS host / domain registrar / host pinging service do
you reommend?

\- what laptop / keyboard / mouse / display shd i get? where can i buy it if i
live in _______

\- what virtualization shd i use?

-

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joshwa
you mean this?

<http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>

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menloparkbum
1) link to the previous posts

2) <http://www.searchyc.com>

3) continue on with your discussion

I'd like to see more technical solutions to the dupe problem. For instance, if
someone feels the need to start the "what is the value of a college degree"
discussion again, the site could present them with a McDonald's job
application in convenient PDF format, then redirect back to reddit.

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tstegart
BTW, I second this idea. Its way better to give someone a little leeway and
help them get the answer than to just shoot them down. Great suggestion.

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blurry
What about allowing users to submit "related links" that will appear at the
top once a certain submission threshold has been reached? It would give your
active commenters a way to separate "good" dupes from "bad" dupes while at the
same time enriching your passive readers' experience.

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wheels
There are some topics that come up so often though that it gets a little old
over time and where the answers don't significantly change on a weekly basis.
Favorites are:

\- How do you stay motivated?

\- Which books should I read?

\- What music do you listen to while coding?

\- What's the best web development framework?

If the question was, "What do you think is the hottest startup right now?"
that would have a higher delta. I don't think most of the time these questions
are reposted because the posting user wants an update -- usually they're by
someone that's only been in the community for a couple weeks. Hence I think
it'd be nice to make a search tool more visible so that people could more
easily check.

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andreyf
The total benefit of dupes well outweighs the cost. Maybe having a list of
"related YC stories" on the side might be a good idea?

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gm
on #1) Asking a question again is fine, the problem (IMO) is that the poster
might not realize it is a dupe. So when someone posts a dupe, IMO, they should
be told it's a dupe (and then the previous date/time posted), and let them
decide whether or not to post it.

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tstegart
Search options exist? Is that in some karma wonderland toolbar that I don't
have? :)

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procyon
well often enough a query like "site:news.ycombinator.com techcrunch" on
Google works for me

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pchristensen
That actually works surprisingly poorly for me, especially when compared to
searchyc.com

