What? Links to old discussions (especially when they were informed) is always good. And sometimes it'll avoid a redundant rehash of points. When it comes to software like TLS/ssh, it's also very interesting to see if things that were true/important a year ago are less true/important now.

I see where you're coming from, but I think everyone is well served not always looking for ulterior motives where there are none. A link to a rich previous discussion on a topic is almost always both relevant and informative, and saves others from having to go an search for the relevant thread(s).

If there's one great failing of computer science as a field, it is the lack of history -- people just don't know what was, or how things came to be. And so we have a lot of effort wasted on recreating yesterdays mistakes, today, rather than building on old solutions to create better ones for tomorrow (to partly paraphrase Alan Kay).