Great write up, and I totally agree, I've been using it less and less over the years. Its a victim of its own success and a monopolization of the community. They dare not tinker with their golden goose formula to make it even better. The SO junkies will create a storm!
Joking aside. They could easily implement a git style merge system for duplicates, whereby people get pts for helping merge topics... because the biggest difference between duplicates usually comes down to wording or similar problems. 99 questions with typeError in title but 50% of them are duplicates.
And then there is the problem where it's hard to discuss the problem to formulate the best title or find the right way to pose the question to get your answer.
I agree that properly merging questions would be a cool feature, but the way it currently works is a good enough solution for me. A duplicate question gets closed (usually before it gets many answers) and SO automatically adds a link to where it's already been answered. The duplicate then won't get any more attention (and why should it), and OP can just click the link to see the other question (which presumably already has a bunch of good answers).
The only obvious problem is when questions are closed as duplicates when they really aren't, but that's often based on the question being misunderstood (which can also be due to poor wording) and only rarely because the person flagging just wasn't competent enough to fully understand the nuances of the question.
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Great write up, and I totally agree, I've been using it less and less over the years. Its a victim of its own success and a monopolization of the community. They dare not tinker with their golden goose formula to make it even better. The SO junkies will create a storm!
Joking aside. They could easily implement a git style merge system for duplicates, whereby people get pts for helping merge topics... because the biggest difference between duplicates usually comes down to wording or similar problems. 99 questions with typeError in title but 50% of them are duplicates.
And then there is the problem where it's hard to discuss the problem to formulate the best title or find the right way to pose the question to get your answer.
I agree that properly merging questions would be a cool feature, but the way it currently works is a good enough solution for me. A duplicate question gets closed (usually before it gets many answers) and SO automatically adds a link to where it's already been answered. The duplicate then won't get any more attention (and why should it), and OP can just click the link to see the other question (which presumably already has a bunch of good answers).
The only obvious problem is when questions are closed as duplicates when they really aren't, but that's often based on the question being misunderstood (which can also be due to poor wording) and only rarely because the person flagging just wasn't competent enough to fully understand the nuances of the question.