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In the improvement about implementation of question there's no indication why the stub should be locked, since the only difference between a merged question and a duplicate is that answers in one were moved to another question, why is locking needed?

This puts us on situations where we can't delete bad signposts or a off topic question which was the merging target. It's possible that this behavior is altered so that it no longer locks the source?

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    For one thing, last time I merged questions, it also moved all the comments. Locking the original might be to keep all the new comments and votes in one place, perhaps?
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 14:04
  • 3
    @Tink that's worthy of an answer, IMO.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 14:23
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    Does this answer your question? What is a “merged” question? (see the section: "Anything else I should know about merged questions?"), and duplicate question with guessed answers.
    – Rob
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 16:59
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    @Rob "The merge stub question is locked to prevent edits to its content that would make the merge no longer make sense" that was Sonic's interpretation. That wasn't part of the design. From the point of view of everything, merge and duplicate is the same thing... just moving answers from one post to the other.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 18:48
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    @Tinkeringbell considering that comments are second class citizens, I would argue that comments on the question should be deleted anyways.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 18:49
  • @Shadow10YearsWizard this is not a discussion, I want to "[understand] how features work and why they work that way". That's what the support tag is for.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 20:10
  • @Braiam in some cases, sure ;) in this case it was Tim's goodbye/thank-you post and some comments should definitely stay. But my theory is only that, a theory... I don't have an answer for you, just speculation :)
    – Tinkeringbell Mod
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 20:13
  • @Tinkeringbell yeah, I think I have to ask Jeff what kind of glue he was sniffing (he claim he was) so maybe there isn't a good or any reason for it.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 20:14
  • That linked FAQ originally contained a bullet that no-longer-useful merge stubs should be flagged for deletion, but an SO moderator (Cody Gray) edited that text out, claiming that that was an invalid use for flags. I'd probably ping them asking why they edited that out and why they believed that was the case.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 20:23
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    Also, the whole reason why a stub is left behind is because in the past, merging would hard delete the merge source. A stub is left behind so that there's an unanswered duplicate question so that anonymous users are redirected to the target. I believe the lock is there so that this state doesn't change and it continues to redirect for anonymous users, while registered users can see the exact history of what went on.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 20:29
  • @SonictheK-DayHedgehog said moderator, doesn't know why they should be locked at all. BTW, the only reason why they hard delete it, was because Jeff was smelling glue. You can find reasoning on the blog post I linked.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 22:36
  • @SonictheK-DayHedgehog the reasoning to leaving the stub was explained in the blog post. What is not explained anywhere is why it's locked at all.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 22:41
  • It's likely to prevent people from voting to reopen it, which would destroy the relationship between the two questions and stop anonymous user redirects.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 22:42
  • @SonictheK-DayHedgehog which would be a explanation, not a very reasonable one. Which is why I'm waiting for an employee to answer this.
    – Braiam
    Commented Dec 12, 2020 at 22:45

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