I guess the purpose of flagging a post as duplicate is to prevent people from taking the effort to answer a question that has been answered before. So does it make sense to flag a question if someone has already answered it? Are there other reasons why a duplicate question should be flagged as such other than the one I've mentioned?
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- 3$\begingroup$ The closing of a duplicate is a bit different from the other closure reasons. It is not as much a matter of preventing or discouraging new Answers as linking the duplicates together so that all good Answers can be more easily found by future searchers. $\endgroup$hardmath– hardmath2018-08-12 15:16:06 +00:00Commented Aug 12, 2018 at 15:16
- 1$\begingroup$ Yes, it usually makes a lot of sense to flag any question that may be a duplicate of another. $\endgroup$amWhy– amWhy2018-08-12 17:01:05 +00:00Commented Aug 12, 2018 at 17:01
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2 Yes. It does.
It helps to sort the site, it helps to point people to more answers, and it helps to signal that perhaps one should search the site before posting a question.
- 7$\begingroup$ And it also helps to signal that perhaps one should search the site before posting an answer. $\endgroup$Jyrki Lahtonen– Jyrki Lahtonen2018-08-12 12:28:54 +00:00Commented Aug 12, 2018 at 12:28
- $\begingroup$ I feel that the phrase "perhaps one should search...before posting a question" implies that searching would have been successful (which is not always the case - with many of the duplicated I have flagged I only flagged them because I know the original is there and I then spend a while searching for it). I don't know what this phrase should be replaced with though. $\endgroup$user1729– user17292018-08-13 09:43:31 +00:00Commented Aug 13, 2018 at 9:43