3

This is most likely a duplicate itself, but I could not find the answer...

What happens to questions marked as duplicate? Do they stay up, live and searchable to all with just the link to the original and a tag saying 'duplicate'?

I constantly am googling a question and find the answer on SX that is actually apart of a duplicated question and am wondering why...

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Generally, duplicates stick around to serve as signposts to the original question. The person asking that question is often using different keywords, so people searching by those keywords — like you! — will find the duplicate and be lead to the original by it.

Questions do get deleted sometimes, but only when they are of no lasting value whatsoever. The same help article on deletion cautions against deleting duplicates.

1
  • 2
    Thanks, personally I think they can get confusing because I just instinctively lower the value of the question in my mind if I see the 'duplicate' tag. Perhaps, SX can just tag the original question with the duplicated question's metadata -that is just the metadata that helps a researcher find an answer (something like search terms as well as the duplicated question itself). The idea here is to keep the linkage but not the actual visual front end to the user. Just an idea...
    – Matthew Peters
    Commented May 6, 2014 at 0:51

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .