Funny, I was thinking how weird my original post got back to the main page at the top and started to think there was something else in the main page algorithm...
Now, seriously, my original title:
The End of Wall Street (Liar's Poker author) (portfolio.com)
This post title:
The End of Wall Street's Boom (portfolio.com)
Obviously the poster didn't check it wasn't a dupe. I've been flagging several dupes in the last few days and they've been deleted quite fast. It is ironic one of my few posts got the worst front page dupe :(
For what it's worth, I was quite unaware that I was posting a dupe. I ran across the article through my RSS feedreader and, feeling that it might be of interest to the community here, posted it using the Hacker News bookmarklet. It was not until much later that I saw that it had already been posted (usually the site catches duplicate submissions automatically). I would have retracted my submission, but it had already gained too much traction.
Again, the original was in the front page with practically the same title. I don't think you did it intentionally, but you didn't do an obvious check, either.
Regarding the other post here, I was replying the "dupes are OK" (paraphrasing) suggestion, in the general case.
But watching:
* the points of this submission (practically the same as the original),
* the votes for the guys saying it is OK to have dupes,
* only one vote for my suggestions,
* and your reply here getting a vote right away,
...I am clearly not in line with HN community. And maybe my "romance" phase just died and I should give it up.
The point of my first comment on this page is to think about noise in the size of the market for a given post. You probably just hit a "small market" blip. To get a sense of your fit w/ HN community, average over many submissions.
Looking at your profile seems you're doing fine...
Regarding "dupes are okay" -- I don't think they're necessarily okay for HN, I was thinking more hypothetically -- just noticing that they're not bad for everyone all the time.
I wouldn't have seen this article if someone hadn't resubmitted it. Their resubmission helps counteract the "small market" fluctuation you ran into.
I agree though that dupes might attract karma-maximizers, and this might not be desirable.
I leave it to the moderators/owners of this site to worry about. If I stop liking the site, I stop using it.
I thought the reason for submitting was sharing something worthwhile with other HN'ers. The dupe only increases that sharing. That you're making this a personal thing seems to imply a different motivation.
As explicitly in my other post IMHO encouraging dupes is the problem, what the top voted comment here said.
I find it appalling most people here don't seem to see it, as it happens in most other user submitted link sites. Even Digg, usually mocked here, has quite strong software to mitigate this issue, and very often the comment discussions go quite hard on obvious dupes.
If you prefer instead to second guess me, like I care about points or something along the lines, fine.
Now, seriously, my original title:
This post title: Obviously the poster didn't check it wasn't a dupe. I've been flagging several dupes in the last few days and they've been deleted quite fast. It is ironic one of my few posts got the worst front page dupe :([Edit: Both are on the front page!]