29
votes
Accepted
Is it bad to repeat a question if an existing one is hard to find?
If the existing question is poorly formulated, edit it! Improvements are always welcome.
If you think that the existing formulation is fine, you can still edit the question to add search fodder, e.g. ...
19
votes
Accepted
"This question already has a lousy answer here"
Ask your question again. Link to the existing one, explain that the solutions there didn't help you, or that there are no solutions at all. Make sure your question is a better one than the dupe (more ...
terdonMod
- 238k
15
votes
Accepted
Do we have a go-to reference Q&A for "I want to do {grep,sed,awk} on {xml,json,yaml,csv with text}, how do I shoot myself in the foot?" questions?
Summary of long answer: I suggest that a canonical question+answer about using dedicated tools to process structured documents may not be useful for avoiding duplicates because the actual issues ...
KusalanandaMod
- 327k
10
votes
Accepted
Question and accepted answer got lot of upvotes despite easily googlable
That question made the "Hot Network Questions" list:
This is shown on the right hand sidebar on every site on the Stack Exchange network. That's why the question and answer got so many votes: people ...
terdonMod
- 238k
7
votes
Accepted
Is a question really a duplicate if specifically asked about one tool but suggested duplicate is for another?
In general I don't like to give answers that ignore part of the question; nobody would answer a question about Chrome with "here's how you do it in Firefox". But text-processing is turning into rather ...
- 92.2k
7
votes
Closing out questions
Questions are closed for different reasons, but it sounds like you're specifically asking about duplicate questions. There's no need for duplicate questions because old questions don't expire -- if ...
- 92.2k
6
votes
"This question already has a lousy answer here"
This situation is partially due to voting patterns. People don't like to downvote lousy answers, because doing so makes them look ungrateful (if only in their own eyes) and cost them rep. Add some ...
- 7,204
5
votes
Is a question really a duplicate if specifically asked about one tool but suggested duplicate is for another?
Yes.
That's one of the consequences of the XY problem.
Users tend to name out tools which they think might solve the current problem using the current approach. I have often seen people tag a ...
- 71.3k
5
votes
Closing out questions
Are you referring to situations where at the time the question was asked the solution X was correct, but a year or several later, solution X is no longer correct, and solution Y is more appropriate? (...
- 111k
4
votes
Project Reduplication of Deduplication - Unix & Linux
From what I have seen so far, your dataset contains very few duplicates. Now, I do understand that this is something normal: your goal is to improve the algorithm, so in the beginning it's expected to ...
- 7,204
4
votes
Duplicate questions, where to find them
Below the question title. Two styles of banners are used (the old one is actually inserted as editable text in the question, the new one is not part of the question text):
new
old
- 71.3k
4
votes
How to merge my own duplicate question?
Since the question has already been marked as a duplicate, you can simply click on the button to accept the dupe target:
For more information on this feature, see:
New UI encourages askers to confirm ...
terdonMod
- 238k
4
votes
Accepted
Are questions about command substitution considered duplicates?
It doesn't seem like much of a problem to me. I like the first answer you linked to, from Gilles; it looks already semi-canonical, though it has other info pertinent to that specific question mixed ...
- 36.1k
4
votes
Accepted
My question wasn't specific enough, but got I got the right answer anyway. How should I proceed?
The linked duplicates and the existing answers addressed the question that you wrote. That'd be enough, in my opinion, to open a separate question. If there was confusion amongst the commenters or ...
- 66.7k
4
votes
Accepted
How to suggest a similar question
Yes, it is a privilege, called flagging, granted in this site at 15 rep. You flag a post as a duplicate if you feel it has been already answered.
Flag posts
Privilege type: Moderation ...
- 71.3k
3
votes
Accepted
Duplicated question, new answer
Just close the old question as a duplicate of the new one. Age is not really relevant when deciding which should be closed and which should be the dupe target: you just pick the best question, or the ...
terdonMod
- 238k
3
votes
so–called "duplicates" are effectively killed from view from initial link - why not make that clear?
For what it's worth, I can see why you're frustrated about this. Now I notice how the site behaved, I am really weirded out by it. But I don't think that means we should undo this specific duplicate....
- 49.3k
3
votes
Question and accepted answer got lot of upvotes despite easily googlable
My attitude is twofold:
For myself, I don't bother asking a question until either (a) I have done some serious googling, or (b) I have a question so interesting that I think it should be here ...
- 36.1k
3
votes
"This question already has a lousy answer here"
Close as duplicate. If necessary, answer the existing question, edit it to improve the question (there's almost always room to do so!), or add a bounty to it.
If something got a lousy answer once, ...
- 39.9k
2
votes
Project Reduplication of Deduplication - Unix & Linux
The project is drawing to a close, and I am planning to take down the annotation interface this weekend.
Thank you very much to everyone who helped out, and thank you for all the valuable feedback ...
- 101
2
votes
Question and accepted answer got lot of upvotes despite easily googlable
I don't understand it either... if someone can't ask a good question (like your use of "append" in the search example, but "without deleting" in the question), then it's not a good question, and does ...
- 1,237
1
vote
Is a question really a duplicate if specifically asked about one tool but suggested duplicate is for another?
My opinions:
It's not a duplicate question, however:
It should be noted in the question very clearly (by the asker) that (a) he knows how to do it using other tools and is aware of those other tools,...
- 36.1k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible