Comment by dang
5 months ago
I'm not talking about the events themselves or how significant they are—I'm only talking about HN comment threads.
Often, a sequence of related stories (S1, S2, ..., Sn) produces threads that are more or less the same as their predecessors, rather than focusing on the specific new information introduced by any Si. This particularly happens when the topic is a major and divisive one, like the current one.
What happens in this cases is that people tend to post their generic views about $Person or $Topic, often in vehement terms and without much curiosity about the specific details of what's happening. In this way we get threads that don't differ very much from one discussion to the next. That's what I mean by "interchangeable".
Consider adding a mandatory keyword search when submitting a link - like every human-averse helpdesk.
Maybe if submitters see something was already submitted 800 times, they'll get the message; though, I have my doubts.
There's already a feature so that when you try to post a link, and it's been posted recently, you're instead taken to that discussion and your submission instead counts as an upvote.
Doesn't solve the sameish story being posted from multiple sources, though.
Any chance of implementing a backend "merge items" feature that redirects dupes to the canonical item?
You may know this, but exact duplicate submissions do get redirected to a single canonical item.
But conceptually-linked ones of course don’t.
> exact duplicate submissions do get redirected to a single canonical item
Not always. There seems to be some issue with the exactness match. I haven't reported it because I presumed it was intentional. Well, that and there's no obvious bug submission process.
Can you give a bit more technical detail of what you have in mind?
Lobste.rs has what they call "merged stories", where the moderator will merge into a single page the links for a few submissions, as well as the comments from all submissions. Here's a recent example: https://lobste.rs/s/djejmh/really_really_good_random_number
I guess it's similar to what you do here when you "move" comments from one submission to another. A downside is that it can be hard to know which comments come from which submission. Perhaps top-level comments need a small marker indicating which link they originally commented under?
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You can’t have your cake and eat it too bud. You’re saying contradictory things. “Yes this is a shit show but please have civil discourse” just doesn’t work anymore.
We can be civil until the very end of the world, I guess. I’ll make sure to hold my knife and fork correctly while civilization falls apart.
If you've found contradictions in what I'm saying, I'd be interested, but you need to find them in things I've actually said. I certainly haven't said the thing you've put in quotation marks here.
I have previously brought you a plain and obvious example of a contradiction, and you denied that it was a valid example.
Now you want this poster to believe that if they were to just bring examples, you would be interested for reasons other than arguing against their validity.
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I don't personally care how anyone holds their knife and fork - I prefer chopsticks anyway.
But yes, I do intend to be civil and thoughtful right up until my death, no matter what happens in the world.
That's how I want to live my life, and I'm glad to be part of this community which has clearly stated goals that align with mine, and a moderator team that does as good a job as I'd expect while maintaining a fairly light touch. There's almost nowhere else like this on the internet.
It's also important to state clearly that being civil and thoughtful does not equate to being passive. It does not equate to failing to take action to defend your ideals and way of life. You can be a highly active and passionate person taking strong actions everyday to guide the world (back) onto the path you believe in, and you can do so while striving to remain thoughtful and civil.
"“Yes this is a shit show but please have civil discourse” just doesn’t work anymore."
Why not? Do you think a violent discourse would work better?
(also I have not seen dang making any concrete statements about the topic)