Possible Duplicates:
What can be done about repetitive questions?
Dealing with endlessly repeated questions
I am new to Stack Overflow, but I figured out there are a lot of questions continuously repeating with some key changes, and as I figured out using Google, I found the links of Stack Overflow with the almost same question and lots of very good answers.
Does it have worth to find the same answer on Stack Overflow and give the user the link of that article? Or post that code again?
I think Stack Overflow is a community, so the community decides what is duplicate or not. If a group of people (mostly 5) thinks that a post is an exact duplicate, they can vote to close it.
If you don't have permissions for voting to close you can always comment with a link to the related question that delivers the correct answer, or flag it as duplicate. The OP will notice that and will get the answer to his question that way. Another happy customer leaves the building.
Otherwise, answer the question in full, with a clear written answer that might even better than the other answers on alike questions.
IMHO, answers with just links, even inside Stack Overflow are adding no (or at least a minimum) value at all, since the data on the other end of these links cannot be guaranteed to exist forever (what happens when that content is relocated or removed?), and should be avoided.
