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Duplicate questions are "solved" — it's clear what to do with them, there're tools to deal with them... but what happens when two users post the same answer? This happens a fair bit, particularly on questions with simple answers ("Click this button"-type ones).

Do we upvote both answers, since they are both correct? Do we upvote the first one (although if the answers were posted within a few minutes of each other, after an hour it's impossible to tell as they both show up as "answered 1 hour ago")? Do we upvote the currently highest voted one? Do we upvote one and downvote the other? Do we flag one (seems a little excessive)? Something else?

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  • 6
    It is possible to tell which was asked first, it has a lower number in it's permalink, it's just not easy to tell the difference.
    – Brad Gilbert
    Jun 30, 2009 at 14:04
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    @Brad: You can also hover your mouse over the "answered an hour ago" text that appears above the user's name to get the exact time stamp the answer was posted.
    – Bill the Lizard
    Jun 30, 2009 at 14:27
  • 6
    You can also just sort by newest or oldest, and it should put them in the right order even if it lists "X hours" for both.
    – gnostradamus
    Jun 30, 2009 at 15:49
  • 2
    Vote for the one that is better. Even if their contents are identical, vote for the one that is more grammatically correct, has better formatting, uses markup instead of just plain-text, has a screenshot, and so on.
    – Synetech
    Aug 15, 2011 at 1:19
  • related: Vote to delete answers as duplicates of earlier answers
    – gnat
    Feb 27, 2020 at 17:32
  • Related: How to flag duplicate answers?
    – EvgenKo423
    Apr 15, 2021 at 9:52

10 Answers 10

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This is the age old Fastest Gun In The West problem.

Those who get the answer first should obviously be rewarded for their speed, but if there are instances where users post the same thing within seconds within one another, I will tend to upvote all of them. If it's within a few minutes, I will not be so lenient because that should have been enough time to review the already posted answers or load any new answers that were written during the construction of your own.

Seconds apart = close enough to reward both

Minutes apart = not close enough, fastest should get the upvote.

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    But then there's still two answers that say the same thing. It would be best if we could merge them somehow.
    – endolith
    May 16, 2012 at 14:21
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    What about several days / months / years between the answers? For example, the answer of simao and the answer of Calmarius to the same question? Should the answer of Calmarius be downvoted for posting more or less exactly the same answer several years later?
    – Martin Thoma
    Oct 29, 2015 at 11:29
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    Well, I saw many times the following strategy: one quickly puts an incomplete answer and then edits it several times later. Your approach would reward this strategy. One could go further - put wrong or incomplete answer to be the first and then edit it to copy a correct answer from someone else. In fact there is no way to determine who gave the correct or the best answer first
    – Andrej Adamenko
    Nov 26, 2015 at 8:00
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    @MartinThoma I see this in this answer today, and see it quite often. I find it really irritating (to say the least). I do not understand why there are no flag options for duplicate answers... it is stupid...
    – Jonathan
    Jul 7, 2016 at 14:30
  • Could coding be added to flag duplicate answers, and then the site would group them with a "X other answers say the same thing" that has the other answers collapsed? That way no one is shocked to find their answer deleted, yet they also don't clutter the comparison of answers by having numerous equal answers up top, or alternatively different ratings on the same answer.
    – JeopardyTempest
    Feb 13, 2017 at 2:27
  • What do I do if I post an answer that was already there and it is being downvoted, should I delete it and will it help prevent an answer ban?
    – FluorescentGreen5
    Mar 10, 2017 at 4:59
  • I had a problem where someone duplicated my answer and got upvotes while I got downvotes. The content my answer and their's was no different. What should I do?
    – user373522
    Oct 26, 2017 at 21:06
  • This is wrong, rewarding is important, but it should not affect the readers. The votes doing two things - reward and sort. I believe first answer should be rewarded but the best answer should be up-voted. I'm down-voting your answer because I disagree, but I'd like to reward you for your ideas.
    – Yevgeniy Afanasyev
    Dec 18, 2018 at 23:10
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    What I do see a lot is new users posting duplicate answers seeking points since just 1 upvote take several downvotes to nullify it. I understand that some dupes can be actually better than first ones, it's not a grey area anymore when an answer is posted months/years after the accepted adding nothing of new. There should be a close/delete dupe low-quality answer.
    – Andre Figueiredo
    Jan 28, 2019 at 2:50
  • Is it just me, or is anyone else tempted to just cut and paste the contents of this answer into a new answer?
    – pwilcox
    Mar 11, 2021 at 17:50
  • @AndreFigueiredo There's actually a Late Answer review queue, but apparently it doesn't work so well.
    – EvgenKo423
    Apr 14, 2021 at 13:01
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This is an old topic, which wasn't active for a bit, but it is still live.

The age-old Fastest Gun In The West problem was mentioned. I've found a case which is the exact opposite of it. In the question How to get the number of elements in a list in Python? the answer was given, and two years after another answer was given, which contained exactly the same solution, only the example code a bit modified.

This post brings nothing new to the topic, but because this is one of the most common learner's questions, it got a few upvotes. Someone is even curious why it got any downvotes...

I've searched for 'duplicate answer' flag, but such flag doesn't exist. I've commented, flagged as requiring moderator attention and downvoted. Maybe a bit exaggerated, but the reputation from such answers is a stowaway effect.

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    It's also pretty annoying when the duplicate is marked as the correct answer because then you downvotes won't bring the original above the duplicate.
    – c1moore
    Jan 29, 2019 at 23:14
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    There should be a 'duplicate answer' flag. Not only are duplicate answers not adding any value to the topic, they are actually bloating it, making the unique answers less visible. It would be neat to have a merge method where in case of a fastest gun condition both authors are rewarded for the same question
    – MuhsinFatih
    Apr 14, 2019 at 4:25
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I started to comment on the later ones. This will encourage them hopefully to either withdraw or enhance the answer to add value. (if I can't see which is the later one, I prefer to comment on the underdog.)

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    What kind of comment?
    – endolith
    May 16, 2012 at 14:21
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    I crafted a comment: "Hi, Welcome to (ExchangeSite) As explained in the tour (with link for appropriate tour), this site is a repository of useful questions and their answers. Your answer is not essentially different from (the accepted answer, (this other answer), etc) and not very useful since it does not add any new value or information. Please avoid writing duplicate answers, either edit your answer to add value or delete it altogether, this will ensure all questions and answers on the site remain useful not scattered/duplicated."
    – user403372
    Oct 3, 2018 at 5:49
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Personally I upvote the response which answers the question most completely and with the most detail (not always the same thing). If there are 2 responses which are simply "click here" with out any value added, neither get the vote.

I have on at least one occasion had my response trump 2 preexisting responses which were both technically correct, but not very useful. I believe this is because I included more background, a code example and link to further information.

That, IMO, is the type of answer that should be, and in many cases is the type of response that gets rewarded over time.

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Other than the fastest gun in the west problem, this also happens for very old questions with many upvotes. As an example see this: What's the difference between @Component, @Repository & @Service annotations in Spring?.

It has 24 Answers, all of which saying the same. While there is some merit in finding the best way to express an answer or solution, in this case further answer were probably given with the sole intent of gather reputation or badges.

This may not be a huge problem, but it can have significant effects:

  • when new solutions become available because of technology changes, a new repaired answer will take time to gather enough votes to become visible
  • All these duplicate answers make Stackexchange sites look silly and make the community look focussed on reputation gain, not on producing quality.
  • This happens for highly visible / visited questions
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    I agree with everything you said here... but it does not answer the question.
    – Stack Underflow
    Apr 23, 2020 at 23:41
  • Not sure if I should rather modify the question or add as comment instead?
    – tkruse
    Apr 24, 2020 at 3:49
  • Mostly I was giving you a hard time. This particular Q/A has become more of a discussion anyway. I think it's fine to leave it.
    – Stack Underflow
    Apr 24, 2020 at 16:59
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I usually wait a minute to see what user takes the effort to expand his answer. Then upvote that person. Or if someone comes along with an expanded well thought out answer.

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When reviewing "Late answers" found this answer.

There's at least two other answers mentioning the exact same, so I've decided to downvote and comment saying exactly that:

Hi @chrischang, there's at least two other answers like yours https://stackoverflow.com/a/24342405/5675325 , https://stackoverflow.com/a/53450351/5675325 , this doesn't add value.

My desire was to flag as "In need of moderator intervention" though.

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I had this happen just yesterday (my answer happened to be first, but the other user got one upvote before me, so naturally his answer got the rest of the upvotes). As the duplicater (who lost the vote count) I just removed my answer.

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  • Periodically I go through my answers and delete those that have no votes. I leave the ones with up-votes even if they are very similar to other answers on the assumption that somebody found it useful so there must be something in my answer that's not in anyone else's.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Jun 30, 2009 at 13:29
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    @ChrisF: I generally don't delete my answers as long as they include some piece of information that others haven't mentioned. Even if they aren't up-voted. Otherwise, maybe. I'm lazy, though, and going through my old answers "...sounds suspiciously like work." (er... that makes more sense if you know "That sounds suspiciously like work." is my catchphrase)
    – Powerlord
    Jun 30, 2009 at 13:53
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(My answer sounds more like a proposal so maybe I should post it separately?)

When the question is old and it's been awhile and very-similar/dupe answers still exist and haven't been edited to improve quality and distinguish from other answers, it would be neat to have a way to flag X answers as dupe and have a way to vote for which should stay while the others should go down.

Eg. here: The three last answers (by Swaff, Kim and Smallgods) are almost identical and keeping the 3 of them doesn't provide any additional value and even add unwanted noise:

How to empty a list in C#?

As others mentioned, it would be neat having a proper way of dealing with those. (Or an officially preferred way with existing tool)

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Having just been 'second place' on an answer that was char for char identical (bar flags), separated by by 23 seconds, with consecutive answer ids. I wonder if there's any mileage in the answer submission action alerting the submitter to any answers that have been submitted since they started writing their own answer?

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  • The "1 new answer has been posted" banner should do this, although it only updated periodically. Not sure an on-post alert is terribly useful, as you can always just delete your own answer should it be a dupe
    – dbr
    Aug 5, 2009 at 15:05

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