57

When flagging an answer there doesn't seem to be an option for identifying apparent duplicates. Is there an etiquette or something in place for this? Can I suggest a flag as duplicate option. It seems that people reputation hunt by duplicating previously stated answers, with changes limited or non existent. Others have seen answers posted months (or even years) later that are exact duplicates of earlier answers on the same question.

The difficult use case are answers submitted at the same time. In this scenario the time between answers is short suggesting introduction of a Merge feature, assigning joint authorship, splitting the reputation for the answer and allowing for an editor to take the best of both duplicate answers.

Improve this question
3
  • 6
    The time the answer was posted is a good guideline when looking to cast your vote, if two answers are basically identical. Don't forget, a few people may be working on a similar answer within the first 15 minutes of a question being asked.
    – user50049
    Commented Jun 5, 2011 at 12:35
  • 12
    +1, but only for the "flag as duplicate" option.
    – Steven Jeuris
    Commented Jun 24, 2011 at 11:10
  • 13
    I've seen a few answers posted months (or even years) later that are exact dups of earlier answers on the same question. I can't imagine a reason for doing this...
    – Krease
    Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 4:02

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
33

Competing answers are central to Stack Exchange; the highest voted one being the one that the community thinks is "best". With that said, I'd consider flagging when the duplicate is posted days or weeks after the original Answer.

At present you have the following choices:

  1. Do nothing.
  2. Leave a comment.
  3. Vote the duplicate answer down - difficult as technically it is useful (assuming that the answer is correct).
  4. Flag the answer for moderator attention.

Two people posting competing answers at the same time and editing them to make them better is not a problem.

Improve this answer
9
  • 17
    1. Doesn't achieve anything, of course! 2. Doesn't impact rep, to discourage people duplicating. 3. Doesn't really work as you point out, and in the case of two people answering at the same time, who do you choose? 4. Hence my original question, there should be an option for flagging duplicates! +1 Agree with the day/weeks requirement!
    – addedlovely
    Commented Jun 5, 2011 at 14:27
  • What annoys me is that a duplicate answer will often appear a few seconds after mine with just a line or two updated so the poster could claim "I was working on the same thing", but by virtue of his/her answer being shown first, the OP selects it as the answer. The minuscule time discrepancy only becomes apparent if the OP bothers to hover over the post time to see it's seconds apart which they rarely do.
    – stealthyninja
    Commented Jun 7, 2011 at 19:26
  • 4
    @stealthninja - if you sort by votes and votes are equal posts should appear in random order.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Jun 7, 2011 at 19:28
  • Why shouldn't we have delete duplicate answer vote for 10K+
    – user173320
    Commented Jun 15, 2012 at 10:00
  • 3
    @gdoron - if you want. Though at 20K you can vote to delete negatively voted answers so it sort of exists already - just down-vote the duplicate first.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Jun 15, 2012 at 10:06
  • 1
    @ChrisF I went through my downvoted answers (I actually flagged 14 of them), some with the option of being 'not an answer' etc, some custom, with an explanation of why I thought the answer should be removed -- usually that they've brought nothing new to the question, that was not already put in the original accepted answer.. Is this OK? I don't want to be a pest and take up moderators time, unnecessarily
    – user310756
    Commented Jul 9, 2013 at 13:32
  • @Yve - that is a waste of moderator time. You can delete your own answers if they haven't been accepted. You are very likely to get your flags declined.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Jul 9, 2013 at 14:00
  • What I need to find is 'Closed for Answers'. Whatever happened to those old locked Q&As.... more googling by me needs be.
    – Crowie
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 14:16
  • I need to google 'Can a question and answer be locked' as I believe this used to be a feature. As I recall trusted people could post an answer.... Anyway, I'm sure I can find a way around this problem of 'noisy without any addition' answers w/ the trade-off being I need to determine if Answer-er is providing some value I havent yet appreciated.
    – Crowie
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 14:36
4

I really like the "merge" function idea. I often delete my own answers in favour of others that have posted a very similar one almost at the same time. I do this because I think it improves the overall question quality if we don't have 12 identical answers every time the question is somewhat trivial. But if there was a "merge" function, I would get a little more credit for the answer (and its deletion). Also I would probably spend some time in chasing after duplicate answers in other questions, marking them as "merge candidates"

So in the end, I really think an answer "merge" function would improve the overall quality of Stack Overflow

Improve this answer
3
  • 2
    I dunno; I would worry that nuances between answers would get lost, or the resulting merged answer would be confusing. It would also suck to get your answer merged with one that attracts lots of down votes because it was incorrect in a way the merge voters did not realize. Finally, the only answers that would be 100% clear duplicates would be extremely simple ones, I think; and I don't think they are worth the effort.
    – Andrew Barber
    Commented May 21, 2012 at 8:56
  • 1
    @AndrewBarber: Wherever nuances are even possible, this wouldn't apply, of course. But there are many simple questions out there, where answers are really identical. With a flagging system (and a certain amount of agreeing flaggers needed), only the answers worth merging would be merged. But I can see that this is quite a bit of effort for some marginal problem
    – Lukas Eder
    Commented May 21, 2012 at 9:00
  • Agreed Lukas. It seems like a complicated solution to something which can have a simple solution: vote down duplicates, allow the crowd to vote up stuff that adds something, allow those who want to keep something to keep it with the option to take what is good into the accepted answer if it is 'effectively' a duplicate. The subject of 'Community' posts comes to mind...
    – Crowie
    Commented Jan 31, 2023 at 14:44

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .