Oh, to be clear... I'm perfectly HAPPY with release announcements, and believe that strict interpretation was ridiculous.

I was simply taking issue with the inconsistency, arbitrary interpretation, selective enforcement, etc.

If the release isn’t noteworthy enough, wouldn’t the downvoted, or the lack of upvotes kill it anyways? I feel marking it as a dupe seems an unnecessary mitigation when these are the exact kind of things crowdvoting is really good at.

My take as well

Same here.

I'm generally extremely impressed with HN mods but this is one of two (three) minor nits I see.

And to be clear I'd also prefer both to be accepted, at least a little softer duplicate check than today.