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I just saw the question Where does “Hello, World!” come from?, which is an exact duplicate of Where does ‘Hello world’ come from?, right down to the exact words in the title. Curious, I entered the first text into the ask-a-question box, and instead of suggesting the second post, it just said that wasn't a very good title:

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without suggesting the obvious exact duplicate question.

I would suggest that even if (perhaps especially if) the title doesn't have any good words in it, that the automatic question search still populate the suggested question list with whatever comes up in the search?

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I can see why you wouldn't want to do that as the "error" message thus gets ignored; it's lost in the wash of the suggested question results. A better solution might be to hide the editor until the user affirmatively clicks a "I want to ask this anyway" button, then populate the suggested questions and show the editor.

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  • This "I want to ask this anyway" button should only be available to users with a reputation above a certain threshold.
    – eleven81
    Commented Nov 25, 2009 at 19:27
  • ...which leads back to meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30543/…
    – Greg Hewgill
    Commented Nov 25, 2009 at 19:29
  • @eleven81 - not likely to happen as it presents too big a barrier to entry to users who end up at SO from google and want to ask a question.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Nov 25, 2009 at 19:31
  • Could the error be moved above the text box, thus making room for the suggested questions list? (And be made bold, red and play a klaxon sound so the user has at least a 3.2% chance of reading it?)
    – John Rudy
    Commented Nov 25, 2009 at 20:29
  • Remove the "ask anyway" button, no matter how much rep the asker has. Then we do not have the duplicate. One poor question down...
    – Ladybug Killer
    Commented Nov 25, 2009 at 21:25
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    @John Smithers -- the "not a good title" message has nothing to do with whether it's a duplicate or not. It's only some algorithm's opinion of the language you use.
    – tvanfosson
    Commented Nov 25, 2009 at 21:26
  • I know that, tvanfosson. But I like the "kill two flies with one stroke" approach.
    – Ladybug Killer
    Commented Nov 26, 2009 at 8:48

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