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If a related question is also linked in the OP, need it really be linked twice in the sidebar under both "Linked" and "Related"?

Example of this occurring

I would have thought just displaying under 'linked' would suffice, as the OP presumably linked it because it was relevant, and displaying here shows they considered it. Showing it in 'related' as well serves only (so far as I see) to occupy a space that could otherwise be used for another related question.

What added value does the second link provide?

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  • 2
    The "related" question list is built first. Sometimes questions that happen to be related also get "linked" buy other community members. Linking a question doesn't make it any less related.
    – user102937
    Mar 15, 2014 at 21:15
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    On the contrary I would argue it makes the question more related. But this doesn't mean it needs to be listed twice.
    – OJFord
    Mar 15, 2014 at 21:26
  • I think excluding linked items from the related list would just make things more confusing.
    – user102937
    Mar 15, 2014 at 21:27
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    I think excluding linked items from the related list would leave more room for more related items (I expect in many cases there are more related items than can be shown in a short list). Jul 28, 2017 at 8:30
  • A related bug report, marked as [status-bydesign]: Linked and Related sections contain duplicate links to questions. There's also a related feature request to change this behavior: Remove post from the related list if it's in the linked list already
    – V2Blast
    Oct 23, 2022 at 23:55

1 Answer 1

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Make room to show more related questions

For many questions, the "Related" items are just a small selection from a much longer list. Showing items in both lists, "Linked" and "Related", means other related items have to be omitted. This means useful information is being lost.

Since the two links are right next to each other on the screen, there is no benefit to the duplication, only a missed opportunity to show more relevant information.


Although this meta question is a few years old, I can confirm that this duplication still happens today. It is particularly wasteful in cases where a number of different questions are shown in the "Linked" section, with their duplicates taking up a significant proportion of the "Related" section.

Note that a very similar question was raised as a in 2010, and closed as in 2011, and the tag was removed in 2012. The fact that this behaviour was intentional doesn't seem like a good reason to avoid improving it, and the redundancy could even be avoided by having a list for "Linked and Related", as suggested in a late answer there. This would save space any time there were more than 1 duplicate, and improve clarity even where the space is the same.

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