"each time an article is posted here that takes a stand one way or the other, it prejudices the resultant discussion."<p>Wouldn't a good thing to do in such a situation be to write an article of one's own summarizing the key points from both the pro and anti arguments, titling it something like "To tab or not to tab" and linking to that instead? 
That way you don't have to take a stand on a polarizing article but could get the benefit of the HN community's discussion?<p>HN usually has great discussion even on crummy topics and I can empathize with the intent to tap into such discussion on a subject of interest, but this dual posting (in my purely subjective opinion) has a whiff of deception about it - a "letter of the law" vs "spirit of the law" thing.<p>"by posting two articles, one pro-tab and one anti-tab, the submitter has neatly sidestepped that problem. "<p>Yes it is a neat hack. But I also agree with Mahmud in that this seems (somewhat) trollish.(What's next? Pairs of  "Lisp is cool/ Lisp sucks" "Ruby is better than Python/Python is better than Ruby" articles?  - Good on you for spotting it, Mahmud!)<p>A trollish hack? Why not?