Yup, OK. I'll stop. Despite lots of people saying they appreciate it, you've convinced me.
I won't cross-reference, I won't point out when people break the guidelines, I'll just silently downvote and flag, leaving people - often newbies - with no idea why their contributions disappear or get negative karma.
That might or might not lead to still more bewildered posts saying they don't understand, but that's OK. There's no point trying to educate them. Let them learn the hard way.
As a mathematician by training, an engineer at heart, and a teacher by vocation, I hate seeing the waste of constantly repeated submissions and the redundancy of split discussions. I had hoped to add value by helping people become enculturated, but I've decided I've failed.
Just ignore him. Really, he's not worth it, and his behavior shouldn't be rewarded (publicly calling someone out and framing them in a bad light without context).
Perhaps a "merge with other post" option in HN would suffice. Both posts get merged (with the links of the submissions there), the conversation threads are merged and people with an urge to curate can enjoy doing so and we can all enjoy not having duplicate (or near duplicate) posts clogging up HN?
As civil adults and in all seriousness, would you stop? Do you see why I've complained? Cruft is cruft is cruft. Clearly your strategy to mend the dupe problem isn't having a positive effect. Maybe this is because new users aren't aware of the rules (but there will always be new users) maybe it's because people are willfully ignoring the rule (but in this case why should they pay you any attention?) or perhaps there are a multitude of reasons that all contribute to the gradual decline of the richness of information as a community grows. Whatever the case may be, as a long time reader of HN and a recent user, I find that the kinds of comments you make where you show a post is a duplicate does nothing to increase the richness of the content. Instead, your comment is yet another I have to try to ignore in search of meaningful content. Please don't take this personally. I'm sorry to have called you out like this publicly, but I don't know how else to reach you: please stop.
As a long time HN reader and contributor, please do not ask other community members to stop helping the community. If I go to the discussion page for a submission, but find it mostly empty except Colin's link to a dupe, I can then read the discussion that happened.
I agree. I've found the links to dupes extremely useful, because usually people will only comment in one such thread and without the links, I'd have no easy way of 1) knowing that there already was a discussion and 2) finding the discussion.
I wasn't going to contribute further to this, but after considerable thought, I've decided that you have me confused.
When do you get afflicted by this "cruft"?
If it's in the item that is a duplicate of an earlier item, isn't it better to have the cross-reference?
If it's in my comment history, why are you looking there - it's full of "cruft."
It seems to me that the only times you'll come across it are when you actively seek it - and that's no basis for a complaint - or when it helps you avoid splitting a discussion, and that's surely a good thing.
But no mind, never matter, I'm not doing it any more.
=======
ADDED IN EDIT: For what it's worth, in the current top 30 items on the "newest" page there are 5 duplicates of previously submitted items. If people start a discussion on those then they will be missing out on the discussions that have already happened. I think that's a shame, and it offends my sense of "taste" as an engineer.
I won't cross-reference, I won't point out when people break the guidelines, I'll just silently downvote and flag, leaving people - often newbies - with no idea why their contributions disappear or get negative karma.
That might or might not lead to still more bewildered posts saying they don't understand, but that's OK. There's no point trying to educate them. Let them learn the hard way.
As a mathematician by training, an engineer at heart, and a teacher by vocation, I hate seeing the waste of constantly repeated submissions and the redundancy of split discussions. I had hoped to add value by helping people become enculturated, but I've decided I've failed.
I'll stop.
PS: Besides, it plays hell with my average karma.