HACKER Q&A
📣 ohjeez

What does “past” mean on an HN post?


I submitted an item this morning, and I suspect it went into a bit bucket? Because unlike my usual submissions, it doesn't show a "discuss" link (to look for comments), just "past."

I guess it's not unique because when I look at submissions from the same domain I see "past" on some of them too... but only some? Clicking on the PAST takes me to the HN Search site, which makes sense for some older posts, but not a new one?

> 1 point by compsciphd on Aug 11, 2021 | past

Please remedy my ignorance.

  👤 mindcrime Accepted Answer ✓
AFAIK, "past" just uses HN algolia search to search for the title of the submission, to make it quick and easy to find previous submissions of the same article. Consider that on HN, it's OK to have duplicate submissions, as long as the content is spaced out sufficiently. Some popular articles have been posted dozens (or more?) of times over the years.