All the rest, as far as I can tell by statistical measures, are like the stories that would have made the frontpage in the past. They also seem to me personally about the same.
Funny, I completely agree with BrandonM's list except for this one. Yes, it has been covered at least a dozen times. And yes, it would be easy to google what you're looking for. But I never mind these threads. Remember lots of people come and go, so OP probably never saw the first dozen or so threads. And there's a big difference between an impersonal search engine and real hackers answering YOUR question. I've done it myself, without reservation. I think that repeating the answers to these noobie questions every month or so is a small price to pay to make them feel welcome into the community. Who knows, your cordial response may encourage them enough to stay and maybe change the world someday.
As one of the principal posters in that thread, I obviously agree with you.
Do folks not understand how teaching works? How coaching works? How leadership works? How a community works? This group isn't just a dusty library, filled with books that may be out of date and librarians who tell you to be quiet and RTFM.
People like having their questions answered by real humans. They crave contact. They crave personality. They need to know that someone is out there, listening. The voice of an actual human telling you what to do is often more real than your own voice, or the disembodied voice of an old book.
Yes, the questions are almost always the same. That's how teaching works: You're surrounded by novices, and once they stop being novices they leave and are replaced by another group of novices. The secret to being a good teacher is to take enough joy in helping others -- and, less charitably, in the sound of your own voice repeating itself -- to be able to do it again and again with only minor variations.
You're absolutely right. I was stretching a bit with that one, and looking back, I'm not really sure that I should have included it, because I have many of the same sentiments that you do.
That said, I have seen similar Ask YC posts that do cover the exact same ground as old ones and annoy me a bit more than that one. I guess I was trying to use that one as an example of such a submission, although it wasn't really a good example.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=149482
All the rest, as far as I can tell by statistical measures, are like the stories that would have made the frontpage in the past. They also seem to me personally about the same.