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I can't find the feature request / bug report on Meta Stack Overflow that led to changes to the Mark As Duplicate system over the past few days.

Could you point me to it, please?

I would like to cast a vote on it, after-the-fact, since I have found the changes impeding my ability to perform the 10/15-daily "Fatal error: Call to a member function fetch_assoc() on a non-object" dup close task that keeps the tag from completely imploding.

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  • As far as I know, there hasn't been any official announcement yet. Just a series of gradual changes.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 2, 2013 at 0:03
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    I see. So who requested the change? What was wrong with the old system? Feb 2, 2013 at 0:04
  • 10 to 15? Really? What was the target of all the previous close-as-dupe votes before this week? Feb 2, 2013 at 0:05
  • @MichaelPetrotta: Usually the top hit in the "Related" sidebar, which no longer shows up in the list of suggested duplicates, and which often don't have upvoted answers (because the whole topic sucks and draws total derision) so are no longer accepted. I'd like to know the rationale for this decision. Quality/quantity of answers has nothing to do with whether a question has been asked before. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:08
  • @LightnessRacesinOrbit: This particular one, I don't believe anyone did. I'm curious what their reasoning was behind it. But some other changes include the new dialog, the [duplicate] appendage, and changed the info box to say "marked as duplicate". This is apparently just the next phase of whatever "duplicate campaign" they appear to be on. I'm sure they'll let us know everything when they're done with their evil plans.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Feb 2, 2013 at 0:09
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    @animuson: Might have been nice to have been consulted, is all I'm saying! I know they don't have to, but this is a community of hundreds of thousands of software developers, so you'd think we could be useful. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:10
  • You might find the most recent podcast interesting listening. Joel was pushing back against what he sees as excessive closures. Not dupes specifically, as far as I remember, but. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:13
  • @MichaelPetrotta: Joel's more than welcome to start actually navigating around the hundreds of dups posted per day, if he thinks we're over-closing. SO's database has totalled ballooned to the point at which certain tags are nigh-on worthless, in my view. Being able to close things helps a little. Regardless, this new mechanism doesn't appear to make any sense, to me. Might as well just remove the feature entirely if that's the goal. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:20
  • I don't know how I feel about this yet, Lightness - I can imagine getting pretty frustrated when a good (in my eyes) dupe closure is prevented, but I haven't run into one of those yet, and I vote to close a lot. I think the other question, that you've seen, is a better place to discuss this change. It wasn't preannounced. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:24
  • Well I experienced it just before posting this question. It's very frustrating. Dup-closing all these stupid SQL didn't-do-error-checking questions was time-consuming enough already. I really don't need to have to get past an extra filter layer. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:28
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    Via @Shog9: it's here: - Changes to close as duplicate Feb 2, 2013 at 0:45
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    FFS. Trying to post that as an answer. Of course, the system won't let me. It insists on it being a comment. Sigh. Feb 2, 2013 at 0:45
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    Eh, my comment shoulda been an answer anyway I guess. Moved.
    – Shog9
    Feb 2, 2013 at 1:02
  • @Shog9: Ta, Shogilator Feb 2, 2013 at 1:10

1 Answer 1

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Here you go.

There are about 5-6 different changes in the pipeline here, and there'll be some more info once they're all rolled out - but you're right, this should've been announced sooner.

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