There has to be a solution for this kind of problem (duplicate posts like these two): check first https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6053531 and now check the other link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6053424
THIS THREAD HAS BEEN MARKED AS DUPLICATE<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012215</a>
The duplicate link detector has a minimal ability to recognize duplicate links. The Hacker News community relies partly on the honor system to avoid excessive duplicate links. Some members point out duplicate submissions when they appear anyway. I'm not sure that this is a high enough priority for anyone on the HN programming team to devote a lot more effort to refining the duplicate submission detector.
Just a word of warning for you - there is a threshold of flagging that, if you flag too many stories in too short of a time period, you will lose your flagging privileges permanently. It's an odd implementation, frankly, so be aware. It often rears its ugly head whenever there is a popular story here (most recently: NSA/Snowden) in which there are lots of dupes reported.
And what, do away entirely with reviving old topics? I thought it was rather poignant to consider the old news article about Geocities' acquisition by Yahoo when Tumblr was recently acquired. Who knows what links submitted recently will still be interesting in several years? There is value in allowing duplicates.