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Comment by StevePerkins | Hacker News Reader

You know, there was a thread the other day about a new release announcement for some IDE. It was quickly removed, on grounds that the Hacker News FAQ says you shouldn't repost something "If a story has had significant attention in the last year or so".

I remember thinking that it was a real stretch to interpret different release announcements, separated by months, as "duplicate" posts. But this was coming from dang himself, so I guess that's the authoritative view.

Just pointing out that Gitlab operates on a more or less monthly release cadence. Pretty much every release gets an announcement thread on HN's front-page for the full day. And usually there's a separate front-page thread or two in between, to announce stuff in upcoming releases. I've never once seen any of this removed, or even questioned.

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It's funny, I read your post and thought you must be talking about Lazarus. I did some searching and (I think) found the thread in question (I actually didn't see the submission, but was thinking of the 17 day old one that was marked a dupe and later unduped - which killed the momentum it had):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169397

I too would like to see some clarity on this rule. I was bummed the 17 day old one was marked a dupe. I personally love Lazarus discussions, it's so interesting to look back on Delphi and think about how little our tools have improved. I think they are so popular because a lot of developers share that sentiment.

(Note: obviously my opinion, not the actual rules)

I do think the rule should be based on the content of the release rather than the timing. If the software contains major new features every month that could be relevant to the HN audience I see no reason to remove the post, it's _new_ information being posted on Hacker _News_. (I haven't seen the referenced IDE update post so I don't have an opinion on it either way.)

Yeah, I think GitLab in particular is a really interesting product that competes in a crucial space for devs. In addition, they've committed and stuck with monthly releases, with new features/improvements, so that's why it's posted so much. I love the monthly releases though.

I’ve submitted it a few times, just because I use it and like it, interested in discussion about it. I don’t know if I agree with the rule (a whole year?), but I’ll stop submitting it.

Oh, to be clear... I'm perfectly HAPPY with release announcements, and believe that strict interpretation was ridiculous.

I was simply taking issue with the inconsistency, arbitrary interpretation, selective enforcement, etc.

Same here.

I'm generally extremely impressed with HN mods but this is one of two (three) minor nits I see.

And to be clear I'd also prefer both to be accepted, at least a little softer duplicate check than today.

If the release isn’t noteworthy enough, wouldn’t the downvoted, or the lack of upvotes kill it anyways? I feel marking it as a dupe seems an unnecessary mitigation when these are the exact kind of things crowdvoting is really good at.

My take as well

I think there's some understood weighting function based around familiarity and widespread use in the community.

In the beginning, I suspect pimping GitLab on Hacker News was tolerated because Y Combinator is an investor, and the company is viewed as potentially one of their home runs, with gazillions in returns. Further, there are many GL employees on HN who will promptly upvote or comment on submissions.

These days, GL is so popular that the echos of the early days continue. Self-fulfilling prophecy, achieved.

Ya, but gitlab is a YC company. So they aren't held to the same standard.

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