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When closing a question as duplicate, currently you can view what other people suggested as a duplicate. But when you cast your own vote, you still have to manually enter in the question ID or search for the question again. Often text-searching is hard to find the same question, and it's ugly to copy-paste the question ID back from another tab.

I think you should be able to "agree" with a suggestion already on the table or add your own.

Proposition 1 - Click on a suggested question's link to choose it as your possible duplicate. Maybe a "Choose This" or "I agree" link?

Proposition 2 - Click on a suggested question's link to open the question in a new tab as it does currently. On the opened page is a new button to "Select this question as possible duplicate" to close the tab and select the question.

Which one feels better (or none)?

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  • i added a screenshot, for those unfamiliar... i was planning to post this question, but then i found that it had already been asked, so i figured i'd share the screenshot i had prepared. – Kip Jul 23 '09 at 18:45
  • @Kip - Thanks for that :) – lc. Jul 27 '09 at 1:22
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Proposition 3:

Make clicking on the link show the question in the pop-up (rather than in a separate tab). The pop-up dialog expands vertically to include the question. It can be reasonably small, with scroll bars if necessary.

At the bottom of the question text, include a link saying "Yes, this is the one I mean" - so at least a user has to scroll through the whole question (if it's long enough to require scroll bars) before they can do it, but they don't have to go through different tabs and have the other tab communicate back to the original one - keep it in the same flow.

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+1 for Proposition 1. Frankly I think the fear of the "me too" snowball effect is unjustified. You can have a link for the question next ot a link for "select this".

I can say that the way it is now sometimes I have to wonder if it's worth the effort of closing because I have to basically type in the exact question title more often than not to get it to come up (the search isn't good enough to bring it up based on a few key words).

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Proposition 1: Um, no.

While I appreciate your desire for efficiency (mom always called it laziness), my concern here is overly quick "me too" from people who don't actually go on to check out the alleged duplicate question. If folks don't go and look then how do they actually know?

Yes, the question title may be enough, but may times it take a step more...going into the other question to make the "it's a duplicate" decision.

My thinking is that just that small effort more will prevent this. That's why I say...

Proposition 2: Yea, that works for me.

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    Yeah that was my initial feeling on proposition 1 actually. Over-eagerness of "me too"-ers that don't actually check on the question. (I had suggested it because a lot of the time someone already posted a comment with the same question and by the time I even vote to close I've already checked.) – lc. Jul 1 '09 at 8:35
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Actually, all you have to do is hover over one of the listed questions, look at the 6 or 7 digit number in the link for the question, and type that into the search box.

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  • True, but this strikes me as a work-around. A viable workaround at the moment, but I shouldn't have to remember numbers like that; it smells of poor UI design. – lc. Jul 27 '09 at 1:24
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A while ago, automatic "possible duplicate of .." comments have been introduced. Clicking the link from such comment, reading the possible master question, and if applicable: hitting Command-L/Ctrl-L to get to the location bar, copying the URL and only then starting the voting procedure by clicking the "close" link, works fine for me. Even better: it's the exact same procedure for clicking a link from the list of related questions, which often includes (other) similar questions.

(As an aside: in most browsers, dragging or pasting the URL already automatically extracts its question number.)

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