I wonder if it is possible to transfer some upvotes too. This new thread was on the front page before the dupe tag and the comment transfer and the other thread has much fewer upvotes which inadvertently leads to less visibility.
That's a good thing, because this is not a good story for HN. It's a riler-upper which attracts attention not because of intellectual curiosity (the desired function of this site) but because it provides a channel for pre-existing indignation.
The story itself lacks SNI (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) - a social media handle rename is not an interesting phenomenon per se. Perhaps if it had been expropriated by Meta there would be something to discuss (maybe! I'm trying to be generous here), but despite the breathless reporting about this by the usual clickbait media sites, my understanding is that there's no evidence that this happened.
In other words, a story like this is a good litmus test for HN; it isn't in keeping with the mandate of the site and therefore doesn't belong on the frontpage, let alone at #1.
Edit: another way to look at this is that we actually did two mod operations here: (1) merged the threads, and (2) downweighted the story. If the story belonged on the frontpage, we would have done #1 but not #2, using either the trick that you suggested or something similar.
That's a good thing, because this is not a good story for HN. It's a riler-upper which attracts attention not because of intellectual curiosity (the desired function of this site) but because it provides a channel for pre-existing indignation.
The story itself lacks SNI (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...) - a social media handle rename is not an interesting phenomenon per se. Perhaps if it had been expropriated by Meta there would be something to discuss (maybe! I'm trying to be generous here), but despite the breathless reporting about this by the usual clickbait media sites, my understanding is that there's no evidence that this happened.
In other words, a story like this is a good litmus test for HN; it isn't in keeping with the mandate of the site and therefore doesn't belong on the frontpage, let alone at #1.
Edit: another way to look at this is that we actually did two mod operations here: (1) merged the threads, and (2) downweighted the story. If the story belonged on the frontpage, we would have done #1 but not #2, using either the trick that you suggested or something similar.