How to approach asking and answering a canonical question?

Question

Background: Over at Arqade, I've noticed an increasing number of questions about Clash Of Clans asking how to recover their lost account. These questions are not closed as duplicates since each case is slightly different based on the user's platform etc. I often answer these questions with the exact same answer. I wish to fix this problem by creating a canonical question on this topic, and answering it myself. However, since the act of making canonical questions applies across the entire the whole network, I decided to ask this question here.

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I wish to create a canonical question and answer for a frequently-asked question, as the current questions and answers are highly specific to each case.

I created the question, answered it, and marked the answer as community wiki. But how do I let everyone know that this post is intended to be canonical, and all past and future questions on this topic should be closed as duplicates?

Should I:

a) Post a comment stating this

b) Create a meta discussion and link it to the question

c) Flag all other duplicate questions to show my intent

d) Do all of the above

e) Different order? Something else?

Answer 1

This answer is slightly edited based on my answer on MSO

The Steps towards a canonical question

1. Improve the tag wiki
   It could include links to a few frequently asked questions and in the end also the link to the canonical question. This helps your peers to find the question.
2. Have some pre-cooked comments ready to point new users to the tag-wiki. This helps both new and regular users to read that stuff.
3. Organize some regulars in a chat room to gather samples of questions and discuss topics that should go in the canonical question. This helps the sub-community to learn the mechanics
4. Post on meta your intentions. Most important to see if the community at large supports your case.
5. Make sure a moderator knows about it. This is needed to prepare for the launch so a wiki lock can be applied on the question.
6. Prepare your question and the answer off-line in collaboration with your peers (For the regex post a Github Gist was used)
7. Post your canonical question and answer.
   • Mark both as Community Wiki _{to prevent that some members accuse you of gaining rep}
8. Start closing questions against the canonical question.
9. Improve and update the canonical question and answer.

This sums up the process.

Don't go blindly close vote all questions now as duplicate because the other close reasons still apply. Overly broad or opinion based questions should still be closed against that reason. If and only if the question is answered by the canonical question closing as a duplicate is OK.