Handling duplicate questions

Codidact Platform Ideas
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I originally posted this in a different topic, but it is specifically for “Handling duplicate questions”. (I will edit slightly but don’t have time right now…spent too much time earlier writing the original!)

I agree with most (maybe all, but need to think about the details) of @luap42 's suggestion. My post below is more of a problem description + a way of guiding users before they post a duplicate + my feelings about making “duplicate” not seem “bad” like other types of close votes.

I think a lot of the problem with downvote/close-for-duplicate is the perception by new users, who are likely (but I don’t have the data to prove it, just a hunch) the source of the vast majority of duplicate questions. Some experienced users are part of the “problem” too, because they answer what has already been answered elsewhere (either to be honestly helpful or for Reputation points or whatever) and they wouldn’t if the new questions didn’t exist.

The Problem

Essentially the typical new user has the following problems when asking:

  • They don’t know how to search the site well, or even that they should try to search to look for a duplicate. Solution: More/better automated keyword-based guidance when they start asking a question.
  • They don’t realize the site is supposed to be a repository of knowledge - i.e., they think it is Radio Shack :tm: you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. Solution: short (because if it is more than a few lines most people will not read it at all), but long enough to be CLEAR, explanation of what the site is about. This should be presented at registration and at “start of first question”.
  • If, despite all that, they ask a duplicate (e.g., there are multiple terms to search to describe the same problem and they pick the wrong ones and just don’t find the duplicate, or they find a duplicate but think their question is unique), they get extremely negative responses - down votes and close votes. Solution: Provide a way to duplicate flag/close without it sounding just as bad closing for spam, trolling, hate speech, etc.

Of course, the end result is hard to say for sure, but I would bet that a huge percentage of new users who come in, ask one little (but important to them at the time) question, get a barrage of down votes and very nasty (based on perception of the SO system messages) flags/close votes, NEVER EVER COME BACK. I believe that many of those same people might become regular, and productive, members of the community if they were treated well at the time. That does not mean “allow duplicate questions”. The rationale for removing duplicate questions is, IMHO, 100% valid. The problem is the way we deal with them, and especially the way things are explained to the (likely very new) user.

The Solution

  • A lot more automated prompting and messages and easy to find help pages. But not so overwhelming that they become “more walls of text to ignore like license agreements and privacy policies.”
  • Clear information about potential duplicates and the benefits of not posting a duplicate question (both to the user - gets a faster answer by finding the question that already has answers - and to the community). I just started the Ask Question process in SO and noticed that it shows “Similar” but doesn’t say anything, at least not without diving in to help pages, about duplicates.)
  • A kinder, gentler way of handling duplicates when they occur. Language does matter. Even though I agree that the end result will be effectively the same - question closed - from a user (especially new user) perspective, the current Close process seems pretty ominous. Maybe a totally different category of “action”, perhaps two three different sections (right now SO has everything together plus a mess of pointers - e.g., you can Flag->Duplicate or Flag->Close->Duplicate):
    • Close - This means extremely unlikely to be salvageable, let’s just get rid of it:
      • Spam
      • Trolling/Hate/etc.
      • Opinion Based
      • Too Broad
    • Needs Improvement - This means "there is some hope, with effort from OP and/or assistance from experienced users**:
      • Needs More Details
      • Major Formatting Issues (e.g., didn’t put code in a code block, more than a few grammatical/spelling errors, etc.)
      • Needs More Focus (e.g., 3 questions in one - all might be good, but needs to just pick one and ask the others as separate questions)
    • Duplicate

The end result of all of these will be close so that nobody sees them except very high privilege users if OP (or others on their behalf) does not make significant changes. But they are really three very different groups of problems - “bad” (by any objective sense), “needs work” (which is not inherently bad) and duplicate (which is truly a category of its own - and the OP needs to understand what is going on in order to either revise the question so that it is not a duplicate, or agree (which includes “by default if they do nothing within a certain amount of time”) in a way that they understand what is being done and why it is being done and not lumped together with bad questions.)

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