The number of "this is not news" comments seem to be increasing lately. This site might be called <i>Hacker News</i> but it has developed into a community of smart people who like discussing interesting things. From the first sentence of PG's Guidelines (http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):<p><pre><code> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find
interesting. That includes more than hacking and
startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's
intellectual curiosity.
</code></pre>
While this site is, and should be, dominated by recent developments, recency alone should not be grounds for down-voting or complaints. If a submitted link is not "news" but is novel enough to elicit an intellectually simulating conversation, for me at least, it's relevant. (The novel part disqualifies most political conversations; not only is this the wrong venue, but slinging dogmatic comments is really mundane.)<p>This is how I see it, anyway. I'd really like it if PG weighed in. He might allow this place to run organically, but generally his comments become HN's mores.
I can see your point, though I think in some (many?) cases "this is not news" stands for "we have discussed this before, and therefore don't be surprised if many people don't weigh in, as the horse has been thrashed already"