Perhaps a better approach is to allow something to be marked as a dupe but not closed if the duplicate does not have an answer. If any of the dupes finally gets an answer, all the other dupes are at that point closed (assuming sufficient dupe votes etc) - in a sense, this answer was waiting for a well-asked, well-worded question to come along, and the first answer to it is a signal it was found.

This lets the issue of whether these are all duplicates or not still be hammered out in the existing way, but still lets new users (who remember cannot edit others' questions) add to the overall corpus on the matter in an attempt to be clear enough/interesting enough/lucky enough to find an answer. The "winning" question that lives on as the sole best way of asking.

Aside: Really glad to see closed behavior getting a hard look. I had been taking a break from StackOverflow because I was tiring of the pattern of - google something, find perfect question on SO, Closed, no reason given.

Perhaps a better approach is to allow something to be marked as a dupe but not closed if the duplicate does not have an answer. If any of the dupes finally gets an answer, all the other dupes are at that point closed (assuming sufficient dupe votes etc) - in a sense, this answer was waiting for a well-asked, well-worded question to come along, and the first answer to it is a signal it was found.

This lets the issue of whether these are all duplicates or not still be hammered out in the existing way, but still lets new users (who remember cannot edit others' questions) add to the overall corpus on the matter in an attempt to be clear enough/interesting enough/lucky enough to find an answer. The "winning" question that lives on is the sole best way of asking.

Aside: Really glad to see closed behavior getting a hard look. I had been taking a break from StackOverflow because I was tiring of the pattern of - google something, find perfect question on SO, Closed, no reason given.