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comment by zebra2
zebra2  ·  4002 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ask Hubski, Reposts, and The Better Angels Of Our Nature

So there's an important consideration when talking about reposts and ask_X posts in the same breath. Ask posts are a totally different type of content in the sense that they aren't content at all. The comments are the content. Discussions are the content, and those generally don't get copy-pasted from one thread to another... generally.

So you could search for an old topic in #askhubski, but why bother? A dusty, fossilized hubski thread isn't interesting. 90% of the interest comes from the fact that the thread is living and active. You could post in an old thread. Who's going to read it? You could respond to an old poster. Who wants to restart a month-old conversation you don't remember? An old ask_X thread is dead and all it's merits are diminished greatly.

So thinking of it like that I'm not sure you can call #askhubski posts reposts, at least they don't deserve the same connotations and categorization as a link repost.

And that puts reposts on Hubski in an interesting place. If Hubski is really about discussion then are reposted links truly value-less? Perspectives change with time and current events, so does a fresh discussion on an old topic warrant digging up fossils? That would be taking a far too idealized perspective of discussion on Hubski, really, but I think it's utterly simplistic to say that "reposts are bad" or that we should take a hard stance one way or the other with them. Doing that would be missing the point if it's really about discussion.