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. ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
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 ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Kusalananda's user avatar
  • 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 ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Michael Mrozek's user avatar
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 ...
Michael Mrozek's user avatar
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 ...
Dmitry Grigoryev's user avatar
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 ...
muru's user avatar
  • 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? (...
Chris Davies's user avatar
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 ...
Dmitry Grigoryev's user avatar
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
muru's user avatar
  • 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 ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Wildcard's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Jeff Schaller's user avatar
  • 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 ...
muru's user avatar
  • 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 ...
terdon's user avatar
  • 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....
sourcejedi's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Wildcard's user avatar
  • 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, ...
mattdm's user avatar
  • 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 ...
Monozygotic's user avatar
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 ...
Peter's user avatar
  • 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,...
Wildcard's user avatar
  • 36.1k

Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible