Comment by zarzavat
5 months ago
Yes but that only works if the questions are identical. Often however they are merely similar, but closed as duplicates nonetheless.
5 months ago
Yes but that only works if the questions are identical. Often however they are merely similar, but closed as duplicates nonetheless.
No, that is completely wrong. It is exactly because the questions are not identical that the system works. That is what allows for multiple versions of a popular, important question to catch attention from search engines, and send everyone to the same, correct place.
Perhaps your objection is that, because the target question is not literally identical (for example, maybe a code sample has different variable names, or the setup has an irrelevant difference in the container type used for a collection, etc.) that the answers don't literally answer the new version of the question. That is completely missing the point. It's not a forum. The Q&A format is just the way that information is being presented. Fixing the issue in your, personal code is not, and never has been, the goal.
You are positing that only questions with cosmetic or extraneous differences are marked as duplicates.
That's not the case. As a maintainer of a popular project who has engaged with thousands of Qs on SO related to that project, I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner. When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO.
> That's not the case.
Yes, it is. I have been active on both the main and meta sites for many years. I have seen so many of these complaints and they overwhelmingly boil down to that. And I have gotten so unbelievably stressed out on so many occasions trying to explain to people why their trivial objections are missing the point of the site completely.
> I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner.
Please feel free to cite specific examples. I'll be happy to explain policy.
> When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO.
That is generally irrelevant.
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