A lot of people don't like dupes because they feel that karma for posting a story should go to the first person to post it. To them, it seems unfair to post a story and get no karma points, and then someone else posts (reposts?) it a day later and gets hundreds of karma points.

Personally, my opinion is that since karma points are made up and worthless, it doesn't matter. Allowing dupes makes it more likely that cool stories will hit the front page, at the cost of annoying a few people. Seems like a good tradeoff to me.

People should be happy that an article they deem good made it, not that they got the karma for it because they were first. Being first is luck, not merit. Most importantly, the thing we want to "win" around here are good articles and discussions, not individuals. (Which is ironic, given it is a rather socialist attitude in a capitalist-dominated community culture.)

In any case, in the long run it all averages out. The likelihood that this works for you is just as high as it is against you.