Slightly off topic, but am I the only person who cringes when people complain about duplicate posts?
Can't think of another issue where the angst is so disproportionate to the underlying problem.
I know, duplicate posts take up system resources, and we all remember when Technet and Usenet were DoSed by one too many duplicate posts (or did that not ever happen?). But duplicate posts also make common issues /usability problems more visible, and illustrate how terrible every forum's search is.
And besides, we've been trying to stop duplicate questions in tech forums since what, the first BBSes in the 70s? It hasn't worked, the fight is not worth fighting.
That's why duplicates on Stack Overflow usually aren't supposed to be deleted. They're supposed be closed with a link to a canonical question, so that all answers are available in one place, but they'll remain open to help people who are searching.
Can't think of another issue where the angst is so disproportionate to the underlying problem.
I know, duplicate posts take up system resources, and we all remember when Technet and Usenet were DoSed by one too many duplicate posts (or did that not ever happen?). But duplicate posts also make common issues /usability problems more visible, and illustrate how terrible every forum's search is.
And besides, we've been trying to stop duplicate questions in tech forums since what, the first BBSes in the 70s? It hasn't worked, the fight is not worth fighting.