Account for visible prior reviews in a code-review exercise

When an exercise asks someone to review a public pull request that already has visible review comments, overlapping findings cannot establish independent discovery. Score the quality of the submitted reasoning, verification, prioritization, and corrections; inspect the work trace for independent investigation. Give particular attention to a justified challenge of an earlier comment or a well-supported new issue. Do not infer copying from overlap alone. This also means exercise owners should capture the prior-comment state when the candidate starts, since comments added later change what was available to them.

Applies when: a candidate or reviewer assesses a public change with existing discussion. Keywords: public pull request prior comments candidate review independence verification