When we flag/vote-to-close a question as a duplicate on Stack Overflow, and that potential duplicate doesn't have any upvoted or accepted answers, we are alerted that we can't use that question as a duplicate and can't continue. This same check does however not seem to apply to Meta questions. Why not?
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It may have something to do with the fact when something goes wrong, everyone in the Stack Exchange network feels the need to post a meta post about it at once, so this way they can consolidate all those into a single post to track until they can fix the issue and post a response. I suppose this applies to feature requests as well, not just bugs or support questions.– RachelCommented Feb 27, 2013 at 18:58
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@rptwsthi I've made a bit of a drastic edit there. I think it's fine, but could you please check that it still says what you wanted to say? If not, feel free to roll it back.– BartCommented Feb 27, 2013 at 19:04
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Thanks Bart, Sure it still does.– rptwsthiCommented Feb 27, 2013 at 19:11
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1 Answer
Bug reports/support questions/feature requests don't have to be answered to be duplicates. Unlike the main site, where multiple questions being open might help at least one of them find answers (I still don't really like that you can't close them, but whatever), on Meta sites often feature requests/bug reports might not have an answer yet, but they're clearly a duplicate. And sometimes features/bugs get fixed/implemented without an answer. It'd really slow down the system on Meta if we could only close questions of answered questions, especially as Rachel notes: every time a major bug happens we usually get 3+ meta bug reports about it within minutes.
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2I was tempted to answer with " 'cause I said so ", but this is better. :P Commented Feb 27, 2013 at 19:05
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