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Can we get an alternative to the "That solved my problem!" button that doesn't make the presumption that it solved my problem? I.e. "Yes, that's the problem I have."

In some cases, SE (et. al.) answer something, but the answer really doesn't solve it, it was a "cop-out" -- a "we know there's a problem, but there's currently no fix or workaround". Can we get a button that indicates that "Yes, I acknowledge I have that same problem, and I may have even tried those solutions, but it's not solved by any means." button or something?

I get the purpose of it - make it more friendly and easier to remove duplicates, but I refuse to say "That solved my problem!" if I still have a problem (mostly on principle). I'd rather have a "Ah yes, that's my issue! But, it seems like there's no actual solution there."

As an example: Site icons wrong on some sites

Options substantially limited...

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  • @Laurel That doesn't quite make sense to me. A question is considered "answered" by some pretty wide-reaching criteria, IIRC. ("Accepting" an answer is not the only requirement.) Even in that case, it's possible to have an "Accepted" answer that doesn't work for me, in which case I'd still be inclined to say "Yes that's my problem, but not it's not answered." Sep 20, 2018 at 20:49
  • Rather, it should be Yes, my question is the same. That way, it's opposite and equivalent to No, my question is different. Whether the question it was marked as a duplicate of has an answer that works for you is something different. Sep 21, 2018 at 14:40

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On most sites, users can only vote to close as duplicate if the target question has an upvoted or accepted answer. This problem is specific to meta sites, which don't require duplicate targets to be answered.

The wording does make sense if the target is answered, and on most sites the button can't even show up if the question isn't answered. If the answers on the proposed target didn't help, the user is expected to edit in why they didn't work, and the question can remain open.

Considering all these, and considering that SE's made decisions based on this behavior (e.g. deciding not to fix the problem of Roomba-deleting duplicate targets), I can see why they opted for this wording. Ideally, the button would say something like "yes, that's the same question" or something like that, but this wording works on main sites and is more user-friendly.

All of that said, the wording above wouldn't make sense here because here on Meta, we do sometimes close questions as duplicates if the answer to the target also answers the post in question.

The ideal solution to this problem would be to display something different for questions tagged and , such as "That's the same request" or "I'm having the same problem". But that's probably too difficult to implement. An alternative solution would be to display a different button for all questions on meta sites, but I can't think of a good wording for it that captures all uses of duplicate closures on meta sites. If you can think of such a wording, please comment.

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