
Ask HN: When is a [dupe] not a dupe? - longdefeat
For what it&#x27;s worth, it seems to me that posts are being marked [dupes] unhelpfully. For example, recent posts linking to articles about Beto O&#x27;Rourke&#x27;s hacker past are being marked as [dupe] even though they may offer unique analysis or perspective. The interesting thing is not the report of what has happened, but the interpretation or analysis. Varieties of valuable interpretation&#x2F;analysis are sometimes missed when posts that are only superficially related by subject matter are marked [dupes]. Not a huge deal obviously, but HN might be helped by a slightly more judicious use of the [dupe] marker.
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dang
The [dupe] tag is mostly put on by moderators. The intention is to indicate
that a story has already received front-page attention on HN within the last
year or so
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)).
Articles are considered the same story if they don't contain significant new
information compared to the previous discussion. This is a matter of
interpretation, and no doubt we make the wrong call sometimes. If you notice a
case of that, your best bet is to email us at hn@ycombinator.com. We always
look, and often change.

p.s. I couldn't resist editing your title from "When is a dupe not a [dupe]?"
because it seems to me that that asks the opposite question :)

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wmf
For this reason I sometimes wish that multiple links could be merged into the
same thread.

