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I created a community wiki for this question - What is an 'undeclared identifier' error and how do I fix it?, because it seems to be asked a lot.

It is similar to What is an undefined reference/unresolved external symbol error and how do I fix it?

If anyone wants to help with marking questions as duplicates, here's a query you can use to find such questions - https://stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=%5Bc%2b%2b%5D%20c2065%20duplicate%3ano

Btw, is it a good idea? It seems some people are voting to close it with "Unclear what you're asking", I'm not sure if it was correct to make that question.

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    The key question is are the existing questions all terrible. If not choose the best one to be the "master" question rather than creating another duplicate
    – Richard Tingle
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 12:11
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    Your answer is community wiki, but the question isn't, and asking a question hoping it will become a target for duplicate votes and thus get you lots of upvotes seems disingenuous at best.
    – Wooble
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 12:12
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    I don't see that this particular attempt adds much value though. It already has 6 answers. If the intention was that there should be one Community wiki canonical answer then it clearly has failed. I would have written up a comprehensive answer myself first.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 12:26
  • @Wooble I couldn't find a way to make it a community wiki - there was no checkbox for that. Only for the answer. Besides, what's up with all the negativity, the question about linker errors is not community wiki either, but I don't resent the author for getting upvotes. Anyway, I would make it a community wiki if I knew how.
    – sashoalm
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 13:08
  • @RichardTingle: what would you say about "What is a NullReferenceException and how do I fix it?"?
    – John Saunders
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 13:10
  • @JohnSaunders Great, I didn't know about that question. I just hate seeing newbie questions with undeclared identifiers, and I think they should be marked as duplicates.
    – sashoalm
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 13:12
  • @Wooble Community wiki questions can be made only by moderators - I just checked, see meta.stackexchange.com/questions/72908/…. So I couldn't have made the question community wiki even if I wanted to, why do you blame me for that?
    – sashoalm
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 14:37
  • There's a reason why the ability to mark new questions as community wiki was removed. I don't think asking questions that don't represent an actual problem you're facing in your actual code is a good idea, period. Why shouldn't your question be closed as a duplicate of an existing question, if this question is asked so often? Note: pointing to existing questions from 2-4 years ago that worked this way isn't going to persuade me it's a good idea now.
    – Wooble
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 14:54

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Is it a good idea [to create a community wiki of an often asked question]?

I will answer that in general terms; usually no. The key reason you have established for creating this wiki is that the question is asked a lot. As reasons for asking it one more time that isn't great. But I would consider 4 scenarios

Existing questions are poorly written and no good answers exist

In this case I would edit the best of the existing questions into shape and add an answer to that question. This can then become the duplicate target from now on

Existing questions are poorly written but good answers exist

Take the question with the best answer and edit its question into shape. If good answers are spread over several questions then request a merge (flag the question using an "other" flag explaining why a merge would be appropriate).

Existing questions are good and have good answers

Great, this is the duplicate target

Existing questions are all not useful because they all point at this key problem but are highly specific

This is a case where a self answer of the general case may well be useful. Frankly I don't care either way if you make it a community wiki; my opinion is that if you've done the work to create an excellent resource you deserve the rep from it.

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  • Well, I tried posting the question, but it was not very well received, and it's closed now. Maybe the idea was not so good after all. I think that there should be a such a question, at least so that other questions could be directed to it.
    – sashoalm
    Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 13:07

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