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Most of the general knowledge questions for programming have been asked. It's fairly rare to come across a non-duplicate nowadays. I think most of the questions that come in are oddities or edge/cases.

This was not a problem a couple of years ago in the Microsoft forums. I believe this is because they were not so strict with duplicates. Often, new ways to solve problems came about (sometimes better because of technology changes or new ideas).

In scrolling through some of the high rep-users answers I notice a lot of the answers are based on general knowledge. Playing the rep-game now is difficult because most of what's there can be referenced back to one of these originals and closed as a duplicate.

Is moderation relaxing a bit to counter the effects of what I am talking about? Am I wrong?

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With respect to the relaxing of closing duplicates, it has been discussed here:

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/

In general, questions should only be closed as duplicates if they are a nearly exact duplicate of the original question.

I generally only close as duplicate if the original question is a well-written question with good answers that are relevant to the new question (i.e. they help the OP), or if the new question is too poor to be saved.

I also aggressively close questions that have been asked twice by the same OP, even if the wording has changed.

New questions that potentially duplicate existing content have a better chance if the OP points out the potential duplicate and explains why it doesn't apply.

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  • What I find is that some of the questions, at times, are closed within an instant (okay, a minute or two), which makes me wonder how people can be so confident of not only the content of the suggested dupe but also the replies, and whether anything other than the title has been considered at all - and if this is complacency or considerably accurate speed-browsing/reading/finding/reading/asserting and duping.
    – Grant Thomas
    Apr 20, 2011 at 15:29
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    Some of us have been here for awhile, and there are certain well-known questions that are asked repeatedly.
    – user102937
    Apr 20, 2011 at 15:30
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    Possibly they looked at the Related sidebar, and saw similar Questions. Then again, maybe some people just have SO memorized...
    – John C
    Apr 20, 2011 at 15:31
  • Both good points.
    – Grant Thomas
    Apr 20, 2011 at 15:32

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