I understand the judgement calls one has to make as a moderator and I see how they are discussing the same topic.
The url for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26887670 does not indicate that the University of Minnesota has been banned from contributing to the linux kernel. I judged that as a separate and unique part of the event.
Apologies if that isn't in alignment with how HN conversations are moderated.
Oh no worries! For future reference the main standard we apply is "is post X substantively the same story as post Y". In this case I'd say the answer is clearly yes, in the sense that the discussion it led to was more or less interchangeable with the other thread. But it's not always obvious in advance!
Edit: turns out the mod who downweighted the original thread, when the two were on the front page at the same time, thought that this one added significant new information and so the discussion should move here. In other words they saw things the same way you did. It's a reasonable interpretation :)
The other one was earlier. We downweighted it for a while but that seems to have been a mistake.
Edit: turns out it was just that there were two different threads on the frontpage about this story and a moderator downweighted the earlier one. That's standard moderation. Usually we merge the threads (and I've since done so) but I wasn't online yet.
