(2) people who did see the original post but appreciate the follow-ups as fun and amusing variations on the theme, and therefore want them on the frontpage.
But from a moderation point of view we can't prioritize either of those cases, since doing so would be globally suboptimal, i.e. they would make the site less interesting overall in the long run. This is where it's handy to know what one is optimizing for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) and to have clear principles which support it (more on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329337).
Of course, there is always room for occasional exceptions—we don't want to apply the "avoid repetition" principle too repetitively!—but they have to be limited, or the principle no longer holds.
If you* imagine a topic X that you don't find extra interesting, and then consider how much more annoying each Xi in the sequence X1, X2,... becomes if the deltas between Xi and Xi+1 get too small, and then remember that people have quite different feelings about which topics deserve or don't deserve extra attention, it becomes clear that the global optimization is to downweight follow-ups generally. I'm writing this in haste so I hope it makes sense!
(1) people who didn't see the original post from last week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205632), for whom the follow-up is therefore new and interesting;
(2) people who did see the original post but appreciate the follow-ups as fun and amusing variations on the theme, and therefore want them on the frontpage.
But from a moderation point of view we can't prioritize either of those cases, since doing so would be globally suboptimal, i.e. they would make the site less interesting overall in the long run. This is where it's handy to know what one is optimizing for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...) and to have clear principles which support it (more on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46329337).
Of course, there is always room for occasional exceptions—we don't want to apply the "avoid repetition" principle too repetitively!—but they have to be limited, or the principle no longer holds.
If you* imagine a topic X that you don't find extra interesting, and then consider how much more annoying each Xi in the sequence X1, X2,... becomes if the deltas between Xi and Xi+1 get too small, and then remember that people have quite different feelings about which topics deserve or don't deserve extra attention, it becomes clear that the global optimization is to downweight follow-ups generally. I'm writing this in haste so I hope it makes sense!
* (I don't mean you personally, but anyone here)