The use case at hand is already covered by existing site features:

• If the duplicateness is discovered shortly after the question is posted, the solution is to close as duplicate.

  • Then the prospective voters will see the duplicate banner and are expected to go vote on the master question (or both).

• If the fact is discovered after both posts have coexisted for quite some time and accumulated a hefty sum of votes, the ideal solution is merging.

  • The catch here is such posts are often not exact duplicates but rather "closely related", or have different focuses.
    • For the purpose of the site's M.O., this means that answers for one will not fit if moved to the other verbatim.
    • Of course, they can be edited to fit, but drastically changing a post's meaning would be appropriating its votes (because people voted on a different post that what you would make it into).
    • So, in these cases, the "least evil" solution seems to be just prominently link them to one another.

The use case at hand is already covered by existing site features:

• If the duplicateness is discovered shortly after the question is posted, the solution is to close as duplicate.

  • Then the prospective voters will see the duplicate banner and are expected to go vote on the master question (or both).

• If the fact is discovered after both posts have coexisted for quite some time and accumulated a hefty sum of votes, the ideal solution is merging.

  • The catch here is such posts are often not exact duplicates but rather "closely related", or have different focuses.
    • For the purpose of the site's M.O., that means the answers for one will not fit if moved to the other verbatim.
    • Of course, they can be edited to fit, but drastically changing a post's meaning would be appropriating its votes (because people voted on a different set of sayings than what you make the post into, so you can't be sure they would vote the same on yours).
    • So, in these cases, the "least evil" solution seems to be just prominently link them to one another.

• If the duplicateness is discovered shortly after the question is posted, the solution is to close as duplicate.

  • Then the prospective voters will see the duplicate banner and are expected to go vote on the master question (or both).

• If the fact is discovered after both posts have coexisted for quite some time and accumulated a hefty sum of votes, the ideal solution is merging.

  • The catch here is such posts are often not exact duplicates but rather "closely related", or have different focuses.
    • For the purpose of the site's M.O., this means that answers for one will not fit if moved to the other verbatim.
    • Of course, they can be edited to fit, but drastically changing a post's meaning would be appropriating its votes (because people voted on a different post that what you would make it into).
    • So, in these cases, the "least evil" solution seems to be just prominently link them to one another.

The use case at hand is already covered by existing site features:

• If the duplicateness is discovered shortly after the question is posted, the solution is to close as duplicate.

  • Then the prospective voters will see the duplicate banner and are expected to go vote on the master question (or both).

• If the fact is discovered after both posts have coexisted for quite some time and accumulated a hefty sum of votes, the ideal solution is merging.

  • The catch here is such posts are often not exact duplicates but rather "closely related", or have different focuses.
    • For the purpose of the site's M.O., this means that answers for one will not fit if moved to the other verbatim.
    • Of course, they can be edited to fit, but drastically changing a post's meaning would be appropriating its votes (because people voted on a different post that what you would make it into).
    • So, in these cases, the "least evil" solution seems to be just prominently link them to one another.