To be blunt, you're doing more harm than good by complaining about the discussion. For every person that cries "dupe", there are ten more who are grateful for that dupe. Dupes are a good thing.

And I'm not crying "dupe"-- it's not that people are re-posting an old article with evergreen content.

Instead, people are having the same conversation over and over again, making the same points, repeatedly. I don't think that's a good thing.

As something like Bitcoin becomes more popular, people will naturally have questions and concerns. Should they search for the answer before asking? Maybe, but it doesn't really matter if they don't. People are free to downvote them for asking. But they don't, and the resulting conversation becomes interesting for those who haven't seen its variants, such as me.

You've been a member of HN almost as long as I have. Haven't you noticed the destructive effects meta-discussion has on articles? If so, why are you perpetuating it?

Because I've also noticed the pernicious effect of waves of discussions like this that never die. Articles about Bitcoin (and other similar topics) come to dominate the front page for a while, and crowd out other, more interesting content.

I don't usually involve myself in meta-discussion, but this seemed like such an egregious example that I felt I ought to speak up.