Thanks for doing these on topics that cyclically come up. It's nice being able to see what has been previously said, in addition to seeing shifts in how topics are approached over time.
Though it doesn't indicate how many previous discussions there were, or what discussion occurred. Dang's comments (or occasionally, those by others, I've been known to add similar myself) manifest that information into the thread in a more immediately tangible way.
That's ... an interesting property of UI/UX and simple perception that itself leads to some interesting questions. I've been looking at the notion of manifest vs. latent functions (Bronislaw Malinowski and Robert K. Merton), which implies the related notion of manifest vs. latent perceptions or awareness (I'm not finding any ... manifest ... discussion of this, though I'm sure it exists).
And there's a strong psychological element here.
Dang's moderation often hinges on this -- retitling of posts and detaching of threads all change the degree of manifestation of certain aspects of a topic. Dang's guidance is generally toward promoting productive discussion, and of avoiding derailment.
Which might start approaching a latent answer to your question ;-)
I wasn’t suggesting that Dan G’s entire job could be automated. Merely that scanning for historical matches with sufficient karma and posting an algolia link would be a few lines of trivial Python.
Clearly even the mere suggestion touched the community’s proverbial nerve. I wonder if Dan G has life aspirations beyond HN moderator and how the community shall survive without his touch.
And I wasn't shooting down the suggestion, but noting what parts of it are implemented, how that does/doesn't seem to work, and potential considerations in potentially automating the process.
