Yes, that's what we're inching towards. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26158300 (but I've since written more code).

Edit: By the way, if anyone has a bright idea about how a community-driven past-thread-references feature should work (which, note btw, includes duplicate detection), I'd be interested to hear them. Emailing hn@ycombinator.com is probably best.