Is it good form to repeat the same answer over several similar or identical questions? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Is it acceptable to add a duplicate answer to several questions?

I have just written the following almost identical answers:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/9480689/575530
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/9480606/575530
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/9480549/575530
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/9480502/575530
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/9480439/575530

that are each essentially just pointers to Henson's answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/9256756/575530

The questions are not all duplicates, and where they are I do not have sufficient reputation to vote them as duplicates (though as won't points out I could still flag them for attention). Instead of this copy-and-paste binge what should I have done? It feels like the questions are close enough that Henson's fix will be useful, but not diverse enough to warrant tailoring the answer.

Answer 1

Most of questions which can be answered by one answer are duplicates. In your case, you've got an ability to flag such questions and you should do it.

However, as I'm browsing through these questions, I see that they aren't necessarily duplicates. In that case, I think it's fine to do such things, but you have to be sure to edit that answer a bit to reflect a specific question.

In this specific case, I feel you've done everything all right.

Answer 2

In the specific case, the questions are variants of the same question, and they should be closed as duplicate.

Generally speaking, when the questions are vaguely similar, but they are not duplicates, I think that copying and pasting the same answer for all those questions is not a good form; at least, it shows a lack of effort.
Even if the solution to two different questions is the same, there is always a part that is specific for a question, such as a code snippet, or some steps to follow. To make a comparison with questions you could find on Drupal Answers, on Drupal using the Views module could be the solution in many cases, but I would not write the following answer in all the cases.

You can do it with the Views module.

The Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and tables of content (nodes in Views 1, almost anything in Views 2) are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted.

As in those questions the user is asking about a specific use case, the answer should be tailored for that specific use case; it means the answer should report exactly what steps the user should follow to produce the content list wanted by the user (e.g. the list of users who have not logged in the past two months, the list of nodes with less than 300 characters in their body), or which module settings should be used to obtain the desired result (e.g. filter by user ID, filter by the taxonomy terms).
If the question doesn't contain a use case, and it is asking the Views module, then it is too generic, and it could be closed as not a real question.