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There are many questions here that ask about how GR comes out of string theory. For example, this, that, this also, that also, even this, even that, (finally) and again. And almost all of the comments on those posts are "Related: ...", "Possible Duplicate: ...", "Duplicate: ..." (of course if you pick any Question A and Question B out of the 7 questions, then Post A would have a comment "Possible Duplicate: B" and B would have a comment "Possible Duplicate: A", or "Related: ..." or "Duplicate: ..." or "You cheater! Didn't you check this question: ..." or whatever.) . Maybe this question should be tagged as ? .

UPDATE: Full list here: FAQ questions (on the main site)

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    $\begingroup$ My reaction when seing a new such question is: oh no; no, no, no, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH !!! Not this again ... ;-) $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 20, 2013 at 10:53
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    $\begingroup$ ... of course I mean the GR from ST questions, not this meta post... $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 20, 2013 at 11:23

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What should be done with these questions is that some moderator should find the best answers, migrate them all to one of these questions, and close all the others as duplicates.

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    $\begingroup$ I dont think moving the answers around is a good idea, not sure if it could be done in a consistent way such that the votes, editing history, comments, etc are conserved anyway ... $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 25, 2013 at 21:12
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    $\begingroup$ @Dilaton: Other stackexchange sites do that sometimes. We can leave it up to the moderators. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 25, 2013 at 21:22
  • $\begingroup$ (I know this is a little old but) the first step in that process is to get most of these questions closed as duplicates. That's something the community needs to take the initiative on. So start close-voting! $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 31, 2013 at 1:08
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    $\begingroup$ @DavidZ one has to look at them carefully if they are really duplicates or just related. Asking how gravity is predicted phenomengically is different from asking about Einstein's equations fall out. I would be not so eager to close the old questions which have good answers, if they really are only related, but carefully scrutinize the new incomings $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 31, 2013 at 7:58
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is a meta tag, which are strongly discouraged in the SE system unless they demonstrably and widely serve a useful (crucial?) function for a particular site. (The only meta tag in wide use here is , which is definitely critical.)

Unless someone can argue convincingly that this is a useful tag (which would probably require identifying and retagging many of the relevant questions for it to be useful; the current six questions don't help much) then it probably ought to be exorcized.

(I can think of a reason: if the list in were kept updated, trim, complete and relevant, then it would significantly speed and ease the process of pointing people to their question's duplicate, and possibly help them find it before they ask. However, that's a high-maintenance task, and I don't see that it's worth the extra clutter it will introduce.)

One way to initially populate such a tag could be to do a graph analysis on all posts and see which questions have lots of links towards them, or trying to identify cliques. Are there tools available for this sort of thing?

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    $\begingroup$ Actually, many sites use the faq tag, I think it's one of the allowed ones (SO has a [c++-faq] tag) $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 12:33
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    $\begingroup$ @Manishearth That being the case, the question is whether that tag is worth the effort to maintain. The current list too short to be of much use. If we can populate it, as a community, with the questions we keep referring people to, then it could be useful. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 12:48
  • $\begingroup$ True. Off the top of my head, I think the following topic/question would be useful for a FAQ: The cosmological constant and the expansion of the universe. There are a bunch more sets of similar-but-not-entirely-dupe questions that keep getting asked. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 12:52
  • $\begingroup$ @Manishearth To be sure. But unless there is an initial systematic effort to create a useful list as a starting point, I don't see much use in the system. To quote John Baez, "as usual with open-source software, what matters most is not what you suggest, but what you’re willing to do". (bonus points for quote ID ;).) $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 12:56
  • $\begingroup$ Yep. I currently don't have much time to write long-winded meta posts (notice that I've still not managed to finish off that list question thing :S). We need some community effort for this. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 13:08
  • $\begingroup$ Of course, another option is to just encourage the community to write extensive self-answers that cover multiple related issues as individual projects, and then worry about the faq tag later. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 13:08
  • $\begingroup$ Does that faq automatically put it on the frequently asked questions page: physics.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=frequent ? $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 31, 2013 at 1:10
  • $\begingroup$ @Dimension10 My point is that there is a difference between 'may be' and 'will be' soooo useful, and that that difference is quite a bit of work in populating and maintaining the list. If you're willing to put in the work then sure, why not, but if no one is then there's little point in keeping the tag. $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 31, 2013 at 3:39

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