It's the latter. We do try to privilege the original submission when we can, but that's not always easy.
It's a bit of a lottery who gets the karma in any individual case, but in the long run it evens out. We would like to make the duplicate detection system give more credit to original submitters. I used to think that didn't matter, but have changed my mind, because doing that would incentivize users to find good stories that no one has submitted yet, and that seems like it would be in the community's interest.
Thanks for the answer. Karma, while fun, isn't personally that big of a deal. Appreciate the clarification, and thanks for your continued oversight of the HN community.
It's a bit of a lottery who gets the karma in any individual case, but in the long run it evens out. We would like to make the duplicate detection system give more credit to original submitters. I used to think that didn't matter, but have changed my mind, because doing that would incentivize users to find good stories that no one has submitted yet, and that seems like it would be in the community's interest.