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I know I'm not the only person noticing inconsistencies in the description since it started

yet our concerns are different, I'm not looking to necessarily change the description and, even if we decide to go that way, we're addressing different parts of the description.

When flagging a post as duplicate, we can read the following information in the description

This question has been asked before and already has an answer.

Flag > Duplicate

From this description a question that's older than a newer one and has an answer cannot be marked as duplicate, and we know from fact that's not true

Accordingly to Shog9,

If the new question is a better question or has better answers, then vote to close the old one as a duplicate of the new one.

This saying, what Shog9 says can contradict what is present in the description.

What's right and what's wrong? Do we need to change the Duplicate flag description?

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  • 1
    Your question could also benefit from the wording tag, but I'm not sure which tag it should replace.
    – Luuklag
    Jan 10, 2020 at 13:36
  • @Luuklag maybe the vote-to-close one?
    – Tiago Martins Peres
    Jan 10, 2020 at 14:00

1 Answer 1

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I guess we need to get rid of the "before" altogether, if that's not the reason for closing a question.

"This question has been asked elsewhere and has a better description or answers."

could be an option (vote for this answer if you like that). I've removed "and / or" and used just "or" for the sake of simplicity.

(It would also allow for closing as dupe even if the question didn't get answers yet, which I suppose would be an option if SE actually listened to their users. Don't vote for this part, I'm just ranting)

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  • That's an interesting take but it assumes a better question is a question with a better description, and i tend to believe it's more than that. After seeing there's really no agreement in that, raised once a question How are we supposed to define what makes a question better? but the community didn't think it was good fit here, or that maybe i was thinking too much?
    – Tiago Martins Peres
    Jan 10, 2020 at 6:08
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    That's a good start, but I think the "and has a better description or answers." part should be improved further.
    – Mast
    Jan 10, 2020 at 11:27

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