Does marking an earlier question as a duplicate of a newer one harm the asker?

Question

In multiple meta questions it's suggested that an older question can be marked as a duplicate of a newer question. For example, from the accepted answer to "Should I vote to close a duplicate question, even though it's much newer, and has more up to date answers?"

If the new question is a better question or has better answers, then vote to close the old one as a duplicate of the new one.

A comment on that answer suggests that unfairly penalizes the earlier asker.

The problem with marking the older question as a duplicate of the newer question is that you're penalizing the person who asked the question first, since duplicate questions factor into the question-ban formula

Questions:

• Do earlier questions marked as duplicates factor into the question-ban formula, or have any other penalty, for the original asker?
• If so, could that be changed to not happen?

[Apologies if this question is itself a duplicate. I did search beforehand.]

Answer 1

No.

Closing is a fairly weak signal when it comes to q-banning; voting is king. An old, closed, but well-received question is probably a net positive; a new, open, but heavily-downvoted question is gonna hurt.

The only scenario where this would matter is one where you've never done anything positive, where the system looks at your account and sees no signal at all apart from a whole lot of questions of which a significant number are closed.

Yes, the q-ban system is essentially Anubis.

^{Image credit: MelUran on DeviantArt}

Answer 2

A few duplicates will not harm the asker.

The question ban exists purely to stop people who take no effort in doing any research or properly asking questions consistently.

Yes, duplicates are taken into account in the automatic-ban, however, it allows for a few dupes/closed/downvoted posts.

After all, duplicates are not thought of as being bad usually, because they act as signposts to other users as they have different key words in them that some other people might type into search to find it.

There are feature-requests asking to penalize users for duplicates, such as this, and feature-requests to stop rep gain on dupes: see this.

Answer 3

YES if the q-banning formula guessed by people is on the right direction.

I think Shog9 is authoritative as a a former employee. Shog9 says that, a well-received but closed question is probably positive and possibly non-positive. To my knowledge, a well-received but open question is certainly positive (correct me if I am wrong). Therefore, the action of closing an earlier question still penalizes the asker.

For example, a well-received open question worth two dollars, and a well-received closed question worth one dollar. This means that "well-received" equals two dollars and the action of closing or marking as duplicate always means negative one dollar.

By the way, the OP of this post was asking if the action of "marking as duplicate" or closure due to duplication is negative or positive. Some other answerer are saying that some closed questions are positive. I do agree with their point, but they do not directly answer OP's question.

Another user ᔕᖺᘎᕊ also confirmed that duplicates are counted in the auto-ban formula. He also confirms that closing, duplications, and downvotes are treated similarly in the system.

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PS: I don't know why reasonable doubts against this site are usually suppressed. Here are some common Q/A for this answer:

1. "But Shog9 did not say that a well-received but closed question is possibly non-positive".

Fact: Shog9 clearly said that "a well-received but closed question is probably positive". It is common knowledge that "probably" means "above 50%".

2. "I agree that a well-received closed questions worth less than a well-received open question. But the question still has positive weight and closing question does not harm the asker."

Fact: for example, if a well-received open question worth two points, a well-received closed question worth one point, then closing a question means -1 point: a one point harm done on the asker. The OP is asking about the action of "marking an earlier question as duplicate".