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I posted this a few days ago... I wonder why HN didn't keep the original post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16159589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?

I posted this a few days ago... I wonder why HN didn't keep the original post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16159589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16159589

axelfontaine 9y ago
This is the 9th time it's been posted: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Death%20of%20Microservice%20Madness%20in%202018%20&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Death%20of%20Microservic...
- acd 9y ago
  An improvement to the Hacker news website would be to compute and compare hashes of weblinks so that the same link is not reposted multiple times. Later posters of links could then be redirected to the first post of a link.
  - krapp 9y ago
    It wouldn't work - it's trivial to add meaningless query parameters or anchors that would change the hash but still lead to the same content. And stripping that wouldn't work because some sites use them to route to content. What might work is hashing the text and outbound link content submitted pages of, and building something like a similarity index of text, metadata and a graph of links, but that would probably still be fragile, and definitely be too much effort for a site with as little traffic as this.
    - striking 9y ago
      They could capture the canonical URL from the meta tags in the page. I don't think they do currently.
      - krapp 9y ago
        Assuming a site has one, although most news sites probably do. Facebook Open Graph and other social media tags are worth looking for as well. Unfortunately, they're not always trustworthy.
    - mezzode 9y ago
      Would still pick up some of the low hanging fruit though which is better than nothing.
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    I think they do. I have submitted a link before and been redirected to the existing comments page.
  - striking 9y ago
    This behavior happens already, but only if the link has gotten sufficient attention.
  - joshlemer 9y ago
    Why even hash the weblinks? You can just store them directly no?
  - detaro 9y ago
    It does that, but only if the other submission has been very recently and/or(?) has points over a threshold - otherwise duplicate submissions are explicitly allowed.
corpMaverick 9y ago
... and I tried to see comments on it days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16149039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16149039 It is strange how no one was interested when previously submitted and sudden it attracts a lot of interest.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  Timing is one of the most important parts of getting "hits" on social media, and while it can be optimized for, it's not always controllable. A post may succeed because someone made an attention-getting comment, for example, and that's just the luck of the commenter running across the link when he or she had the time and inclination to leave a note. Social is fickle that way, and since most social algorithms strongly consider post recency and other time-sensitive factors in their ranking, duplicates should be allowed within a reasonable time frame, because you never know when the critical path will get hit.

I posted this a few days ago... I wonder why HN didn't keep the original post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16159589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16159589

axelfontaine 9y ago

This is the 9th time it's been posted: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Death%20of%20Microservice%20Madness%20in%202018%20&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Death%20of%20Microservic...

acd 9y ago
An improvement to the Hacker news website would be to compute and compare hashes of weblinks so that the same link is not reposted multiple times. Later posters of links could then be redirected to the first post of a link.
- krapp 9y ago
  It wouldn't work - it's trivial to add meaningless query parameters or anchors that would change the hash but still lead to the same content. And stripping that wouldn't work because some sites use them to route to content. What might work is hashing the text and outbound link content submitted pages of, and building something like a similarity index of text, metadata and a graph of links, but that would probably still be fragile, and definitely be too much effort for a site with as little traffic as this.
  - striking 9y ago
    They could capture the canonical URL from the meta tags in the page. I don't think they do currently.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Assuming a site has one, although most news sites probably do. Facebook Open Graph and other social media tags are worth looking for as well. Unfortunately, they're not always trustworthy.
  - mezzode 9y ago
    Would still pick up some of the low hanging fruit though which is better than nothing.
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  I think they do. I have submitted a link before and been redirected to the existing comments page.
- striking 9y ago
  This behavior happens already, but only if the link has gotten sufficient attention.
- joshlemer 9y ago
  Why even hash the weblinks? You can just store them directly no?
- detaro 9y ago
  It does that, but only if the other submission has been very recently and/or(?) has points over a threshold - otherwise duplicate submissions are explicitly allowed.

corpMaverick 9y ago

... and I tried to see comments on it days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16149039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16149039 It is strange how no one was interested when previously submitted and sudden it attracts a lot of interest.

cookiecaper 9y ago
Timing is one of the most important parts of getting "hits" on social media, and while it can be optimized for, it's not always controllable. A post may succeed because someone made an attention-getting comment, for example, and that's just the luck of the commenter running across the link when he or she had the time and inclination to leave a note. Social is fickle that way, and since most social algorithms strongly consider post recency and other time-sensitive factors in their ranking, duplicates should be allowed within a reasonable time frame, because you never know when the critical path will get hit.