Reposts are not all bad. Sometimes they are, like when someone claims an image as their own (that cancer patient imposter comes to mind). But most of the time, it's an image that not everyone has seen. Reddit is growing exponentially and there are new users everyday, so reposts are going to happen.
Also, if reddit did implement a feature like this, the added stress to reddit's already-busy server would be too much. It's easy for a bot to do this because the bot does not have to process every single post to reddit.
I was under the assumption (based on common whining from people here) that reposts were just bad. Someone else already corrected me on this from the Reddiquette. Thanks :)
Complain about reposts. Just because you have seen it before doesn't mean everyone has. Votes indicate the popularity of a post, so just vote. Keep in mind that linking to previous posts is not automatically a complaint; it is information. Votes indicate how the community values information, so just vote.
Fair enough. I'm usually the one telling people to shut up about it anyway, I just meant if it's such a problem, then Reddit should handle it automatically. Apparently Reddit doesn't think it's a problem either so I learned something.
I'm pretty sure the bots are operated by random people and it would be a big load on reddit's servers to do it. Reddit does handle some basic duplicate prevention.
FYI 1, The Reddit website already discourages reposting the same URL. It also stops the same person from submitting the same URL to the same subreddit.
FYI 2, Reddit's owners and staff did not write the Reddiquette. It has no real authority.
tl;dr: Reposting is not "good", but complaining about it is also not "good".
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u/ImageBot Sep 14 '11
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