I'm seeing several people post the same thing, especially a link to a podcast (see today's WBD podcast with Shinobi).
Maybe there can be a "merge" option where someone can multi-select and vote to merge posts. Seems better than just deleting, downzapping, or admin or moderator having to do it manually.
There is a dupe notification, but I guess some posters ignore this. Also, it won't be activated if the content comes from links from different sites.
Some posters might be bots.
The same content from different sites is still the same problem. Bifurcating discussion about a singular topic means more confusion and less engagement. And because engagement begets engagement, the benefits of merging scale more than linearly.
Seems to me that there should be a minimum text requirement - If you want to post a random link with no context, then put it on Nostr
Interesting thought.
Couple thoughts/questions to work through:
Alternative Option:
My personal thought: would be to create limited posting space for each territory. Think bitcoin mempool but for Stacker news. Example 6 post per hour per Territory.
If it is a slow news day then you might have duplicate post as the cost would be low.
Hot news day, fees to post would go up and merging would make more sense. Kind of like a mutli-sig for a single post between multiple users.
All of this is easier said then done. And this is not a top priority in my opinion.
Your alternative is an interesting take. I agree it's not a major priority, but there has been a lot of talk on SN lately about expansion and improvements. The devs are good; I'm not worried about it being a struggle for them to implement.
As to the questions, I think if you merge fast enough, then there aren't any comments to worry about. Also, this typically happens with external content links that don't get a lot of reaction here anyway. I wouldn't worry that dozens of posts would merge and be incoherent. The merged posts could be tagged [MERGED] anyway.
Zaps allocation is up for debate, but I think the first to post wins the pot. People reposting shouldn't be rewarded; they should be penalized.
Devil would be in the details. Example: Is it really the same post or different article on the same topic.
That's why people can vote.
It's usually links to the same podcast on different platforms (YouTube, fountain, website, etc).
The more experience users who have zapped post as duplicate have, the lighter the font color on post listings
Good idea
I think this is a good idea.
There shouldn't be posted in the first place as they are marked as duplicates, but they will still happen.
Tagging similar posts as duplicates and then merging them into one, with a section "similar posts" or "merged posts", "duplicate posts" alongside of "related posts" might work.