8

Question 1
Question 2

These two questions have a lot of upvotes and their answers also carry a lot of votes. Now, I decided to flag one of them as a duplicate of the other.

How do I decide which of the questions is a duplicate of the other? They are both from 2009. But one of the questions was asked in January while the other question was asked in May.

Do I, as a user when flagging duplicates:

  1. Mark the newest question as a duplicate of the oldest?
  2. Mark the question with the least votes as a duplicate?
  3. Mark the question with the lowest number of upvotes on the accepted answer?
  4. Mark the question with least amount of views as a duplicate?

In the end I decided to flag the newer question as a duplicate of the older question. Regardless of votes.

Improve this question
0

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
7

The goal is to become a repository of knowledge where each question has a canonical answer.

You should therefore flag the question with the worse1 answers as a duplicate of the one with the better answers. Time and votes are irrelevant.

If the question with the best answers isn't as good as the other question it might be worth editing it into shape.

1. The answers might still be very good.

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    I'm unqualified to say which set of answers might be considered "better" here but by posting on meta one will probably be closed :-).
    – ben is uǝq backwards
    Oct 14, 2013 at 12:40
  • I agree with this answer. I also thought you should always flag the newer one before, so when I noticed something was flagged as a duplicate of something newer, I flagged it for moderator attention to correct this. Then I got a polite reply that this was intentional as the newer had better answers.
    – Amber
    Oct 14, 2013 at 12:41
  • @benisuǝqbackwards What if im unable to make a decision regarding which question has the better answers?
    – Jens Bergvall
    Oct 14, 2013 at 13:08
  • @Da_smokes then use older as original and flag younger as duplicate. If there is no clearly better - worse, younger - older still makes sense.
    – Mołot
    Oct 14, 2013 at 13:12

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .