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I recently saw a question titled "Jquery vs Javascript" (10k+ users only). I thought, "surely someone has asked this question before", and began looking for a duplicate. What I found is a question with the exact same title, just with a little different punctuation and casing. It was "Jquery vs Javascript" and "jQuery vs. Javascript?". The only difference being the ., ?, and the casing.

Since we now disallow questions with duplicate titles, I propose that when checking for questions with duplicate names, certain punctuation be striped out to prevent the duplicate from occurring in the first place.

As pointed out in the comments, if isn't already, white-space and non-printable characters may want to be removed for duplicate detection as well.

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  • You might want to add whitespace/non-printing-characters to this request as well, although stripping non-printing-characters prior to title comparison would prevent "those in the know" from getting around the restriction if needed.
    – cdeszaq
    Commented Apr 3, 2012 at 15:14
  • @cdeszaq I thought about it, but my concern is I don't want the duplicate question block to be too aggressive. That's probably why it doesn't check for these things already. However, I think a small subset of punctuation that is used in English grammar (like commas and periods) would be good to strip. Other punctuation like ^ or * are usually more technical, which could be a very similar titled question, but not the same.
    – vcsjones
    Commented Apr 3, 2012 at 15:31
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    And automatically close and delete some patterns... ;-)
    – Arjan
    Commented Apr 3, 2012 at 16:42
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    @Arjan Wow, for real. Sometimes I think all questions should be closed at time of posting, and have to be voted open. :S
    – jscs
    Commented Apr 3, 2012 at 18:03
  • @IuliusCæsar, how about these...
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Apr 3, 2012 at 20:04
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    Err, are you expecting more edits? See also When is “EDIT”/“UPDATE” appropriate in a post?
    – Arjan
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 16:51
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    @Arjan I wasn't ruling out the possibly. Thanks, I'll remove it.
    – vcsjones
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 16:52
  • Why stop at closed, @IuliusCæsar? Start all questions off deleted so they have to be approved by 10kers or mods to be seen! (Note to self: revisit this comment when balpha solicits suggestions for April Fools' Day 2013.)
    – Pops
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 17:02
  • Child's play, @Pop. We should wipe the SE hard drives every time a question is submitted.
    – jscs
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 17:09
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    Now we're making progress, @IuliusCæsar... but perhaps we should burn the entire data center from orbit on submit. Just to be sure.
    – Pops
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 17:18
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    @PopularDemand - You may want to do it on keydown as well, since you wouldn't want any unapproved characters getting through.
    – cdeszaq
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 18:17
  • That may not be thorough enough, @Popular; I suggest releasing nanites to dismantle the planet the next time stackoverflow.com recieves a SYN.
    – jscs
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 18:45
  • If it's thoroughness you're after, @IuliusCæsar, there's always the option of sending a notification to the global inbox of whoever is running the simulation that we call the universe. In that notification, we could request that he perform a backup and reboot/reload.
    – Pops
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 18:52
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    Perfect, @Pop! (As long as that entity does not then try to post a question on SU about how to do that... "Getting error trying to reboot my Universix box -- URGENT!!")
    – jscs
    Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 19:04
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    Highly related, if not duplicate: meta.stackexchange.com/q/145866/179419
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Commented Mar 24, 2014 at 10:25

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