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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. with a paragraph “In other words, I'm asking how to <different formulation>”.
If you really think that the question would be best served under multiple ...
answered Mar 19 '16 at 18:35
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
732k5 gold badges57 silver badges113 bronze badges
19
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 detailed, clearer, better researched, whatever) and then we can close the old one as a dupe of yours.
11
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 came from other sites and voted for it.
Don't confuse upvoted with good. They are sometimes the same but certainly not always.
7
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 you have a new answer to a question that was asked years ago, you can still provide it there (and there are even badges for answering old questions).
Having ...
7
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 a special case -- people constantly specify a particular tool when they don't actually care what tool is used. I prefer to check first, and ideally edit the ...
6
I only see 1 question in your history that was marked as a duplicate. This is the one you're referring to? check if string represents valid path in BASH. This question was closed by a single user who has a gold badge for questions that have been tagged as shell-script.
Generally it's the case that it takes 5 votes from user's to close a question as a ...
6
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 sympathy upvotes and voila! - you have an upvoted answer which makes the question an eligible target for dupe closing.
So, if you're about to ask a question and ...
5
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? (For example, sysv init vs systemd.)
A new and more up-to-date answer is always welcomed to an old question.
I guess the difficulty comes when you are the ...
5
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 question grep, sed, awk, and anything else they imagine can be used.
In the very case you mention, OP ends up using ed! Not grep, ed!
If someone is interested in ...
4
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 in with general data about command substitution.
Command substitution is more of a common solution than a common question; often people who ask questions which ...
4
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 regardless of how easy it is to google. That is, assuming it's not already here.
For other people, it would be nice if they googled it perhaps, but keep in mind that ...
4
I think you're misunderstanding what a duplicate is. A duplicate is only within a single SE site, such as Unix & Linux. Duplicates do not span different SE sites.
The normal course of action should be to copy the answer from the other SE site, put it in our own words as much as you can and customize it so that it's appropriate for the question on U&...
4
The closed question will remain closed even if we decide it's not a dupe. It is asking 3 questions at once and that would make it too broad anyway.
In any case, if you feel you have something to add with respect to the distinction between "computer terminal" and "virtual console", by all means either add your own answer to the dupe's target (you could ...
4
The general rules for closing as a duplicate is to use the question with the best answers as the target, and close the others.
If we've done our job well, then the oldest question will have had good answers, and newer questions are to be closed as duplicates of the older one. However sometimes a question falls through the cracks. Also, sometimes a question ...
answered Apr 7 '14 at 13:40
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
732k5 gold badges57 silver badges113 bronze badges
4
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
4
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 or dispute duplicate votes
4
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 have somewhat low signal-to-noise ratio. But I'm afraid you risk getting biased data because of this: if someone has to click on "NO DUPLICATES" 10 times ...
4
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 privilege
Awarded at: 15 reputation
What is flagging?
Flagging is a way of bringing inappropriate content to the attention
of the community. The currently ...
3
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. It is a good fit for the rest of the duplicate features.
The people who write the site features don't necessarily read questions here, on Unix & Linux ...
3
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 answerers about what you wanted, then I would recommend editing your original question. Above and beyond the existing answers, you've also accepted one of them, ...
3
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, asking twice isn't going to magically make a better answer appear. Better to have everything consolidated so the voting system can work.
2
Ok, I've not been able to reproduce this but here are my thoughts:
The first vote happened when the question had an upvoted answer.
When you tried to vote, the upvoted answer lost it's vote or someone else downvoted.
Now you can because people started to upvote the question.
2
The situation is IMHO even worse than you describe, in that the person originally doing the research for a duplicate does not get to review the question as they already have voted the question to be closed.
Finding a duplicate, which I agree is one of the harder tasks if you don't happen to remember to have seen the question before, is thereby not rewarded ...
2
I just saw that the question was marked as a duplicate and was just about to post a similar question one here.
No, in my opinion, you are not off-base in thinking that your question is significantly different enough to not be a duplicate. I understand that in many cases where the best answer to a particular question basically boils down to "use this tool" ...
2
If you've frequented the SE sites enough the dups serve a very useful purpose, they are the alternative paths to a singular Q + A's. Jeff Atwood wisely realized this (if you listen to the SE podcasts) and knew that it was impossible to create a rigid structure that would take a questioner to their exact answer, so rather they (Jeff & Joel) opted to ...
2
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 not deserve upvotes. Upvotes are supposed to be a measure of how useful the question is for others to come across, how likely they are to be interested in the ...
2
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 and suggestions. Hopefully the collected annotations will lead to the development of better duplicate question detection systems, especially for StackExchange.
1
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, and (b) he wants an answer specifically for the tool he is asking about.
A link should be provided to the more general question which contains answers for ...
1
Looking at the way the question was phrased, the OP probably wasn't familiar with the term "append". Granted, simply searching for the title of the post would also find the answer, a bit down the list.
But to look at the bright side, next time someone asks the question using those words, this answer will probably be high on the search results :)
1
I came here with the same question as OP. Assuming a person asking a question is using the English language properly, "how" and "why" can drastically change the question being asked. I don't believe these should generally be assumed as duplicates unless it is painfully apparent in the body of the question that the same answer is being sought. In which case, ...
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