Can someone tell me how "Marked As Duplicate is even FUCKING HELPFUL?

Stack Overflow and their stupid policies can go fuck themselves. Is the world really going to end if someone writes a question that's been asked before? Especially when you link to a goddamn question that still doesn't answer what I asked?

And then have the gall to say "exact duplicate?"

EVEN THOUGH IT WAS A DIFFERENT QUESTION?

StackOfShit Overflowing is one of my least favorite things in the entire world.

Yes, the world will end if a duplicate question is asked. I do think they need a reask feature for unresolved questions

Its funny how sometimes they go into discussions regarding WHERE it has been asked before.

You know, just to give you more shit. Because fuck your answer and fuck your question, and FUCK YOU even more.

We don't care about good questions in ShitOverflow! We care about the questions that we can answer.

I might check out the meta to read the discussions on this side for the lols

Why waste resources tackling the same problem more then once?

Asking a question on SO is really a last resort. First I use DDG to find possible solutions (including SO solutions), then ask a colleague and if then still no answer I either take a walk and rethink the issue and finally ask the question if still unanswered

@NotWhoIUsedToBe is correct (and not even there yet)
The concept is good but the implementation leaves something to be desired.

The question is already discussed elsewhere. So common mistakes/suboptimal answers may already have been caught. Ranking in search engines get diluted and that is probably how you got on the duplicate page in the first place (pun intended)

It would be helpful if when confirmed as duplicate the question gets merged. So it is listed as alternative question on same page as the one asked first. That way everybody can find it and if the answer is better on duplicate it can be accepted as preferred answer. The duplicate page should redirect permanently

The problem is that you can’t challenge if someone marks it as duplicate. It happened to me many times that mine was marked as duplicate of something that it is similar on surface, but completely different when you actually read the two questions.

@EngineerCoding what is DDG, would you please explain?

@soumik-dev duckduckgo, privacy friendly search engine

And yes, stackoverflow community is turning out to be quite a drag these days. The fact is people know that as long as they stay behind the keyboards and use an anonymous identity, they can post as much shit as they want. There are a few who seem to understand the gravity of the role and do their best to help you out, but more often than not you'd encounter someone who interprets the policies in the wrong way.
Nowadays, whenever I face a problem I sincerely hope the answer is already there. Also, I rely on github's closed issues more now, if it is something on Github.

@soumik-dev wild guess / cap obvious: Duck Duck Go, as in "Google no steal ma data"

@jkuhl you might as well ask the question here, someone might be able to help

@lukegv I disagree. I've seen many good, well phrased questions on stackoverflow get closed as duplicates by high-ish rep users that clearly weren't duplicates at all (often related in the most tenuous of ways.) Sure you can comment and enter into an argument about why it should be reopened, but then you'll just get shut down by a few dozen high rep users convinced that you're an idiot. There's no point.

On the contrary, I've seen many terrible questions with no research remain open and attract loads of answers. Since other people often stumble upon said terrible question and those answers help, both the terrible question and the obvious answers get heavily up-voted.

Ask a good, expert question that's specific, on topic and difficult to answer? Chances are it'll just get ignored these days.

I suggest reading https://blog.codinghorror.com/what-...

Money quote: "Stack Overflow is a wiki first". Yup, you read that write, not a forum, not a Q&A site, a wiki. Wikis don't like duplication, they are meant to be easily searchable.

Other quote to drive the point home: "I wish more people understood that the goal of Stack Overflow is not "answer my question" but "let's collaboratively build an artifact that will benefit future coders". Perhaps SO could be doing more to educate people about this."