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I previously asked this on Space Exploration Meta as Should we do anything for answers on duplicate questions?. The basic train of thought is as follows:

  • A question was closed as a duplicate. During the vote-to-close an answer was added. After the question was closed, discussion continued on that answer for ways to improve it.
  • Given the seeming reasons for voting-to-close as a duplicate, it seemed to me that spending effort improving an answer to a question that was not likely to be re-opened would be better spent improving answers on the question we point people to.

Am I even correct about the reasoning for closing duplicate questions? If so, is it worthwhile to try to concentrate useful answers to those families of questions after-the-fact? Or is the status quo where all of these questions should be linked to each other and they can be visited and checked to see if they have useful answers good enough?

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  • do you mean improving "canonical" / duplicate-target questions (I.e. the question that a duplicate question is closed as a duplicate of)?
    – starball
    Commented Apr 17 at 23:19
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    @starball only in the sense that that canonical question might be improved by having the answer merged with it, as you pointed me to in your comment on my self-answer
    – Erin Anne
    Commented Apr 17 at 23:42
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    I should think that how this is handled would be site-dependent, and this question should be asked in the Meta for the site in question. For example, in Science Fiction & Fantasy, it's normal to not close a question as duplicate until we get a confirmed answer that is the same work as the proposed duplicate; the reasoning for this is explained in a question in the SciFi meta (which I can't seem to dig up a link for at the moment).
    – Jeff Zeitlin
    Commented Apr 18 at 11:53

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My only idea so far is to somehow move useful answers for duplicates into the original question to better-reward the answerer, assuming their answer isn't also basically a duplicate of an existing one. (I feel reasonably certain such not-duplicate answers to certain commonly-duplicated questions exist on Space Exploration StackExchange; this may be less common on other sites).

It seems like there's some obvious pitfalls; even relatively close duplicates still have distinct enough contexts that entirely divorcing an answer from its original question will be confusing. I have no idea how it would work out technically either, or what the workflow would be for doing it.

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    that's called merging. check your site meta for guidance on merging. Ex. on SO: meta.stackoverflow.com/q/312091/11107541
    – starball
    Commented Apr 17 at 23:18
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    How merging questions works: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/158066/…
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Apr 18 at 2:39
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    @SonictheAnonymousHedgehog so perhaps "Should we be less afraid of merging?" or "Should we merge more often" or "Are we merging enough?" might be a better title or a new question? But before that, maybe a SEDE check for what fraction of well-received answers on closed questions were ever merged (just enough to support the assertion that it's probably quite small). Different but related: Have there been analyses to see if views of well-received answers are reduced by closure as duplicate which try to control for other factors?
    – uhoh
    Commented Apr 18 at 5:43
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    The merging we have seems overly destructive to me, now that I know about it.
    – Erin Anne
    Commented Apr 18 at 6:26
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    @ErinAnne I think the first step would be to take a half-dozen cases of merging in an SE site you're familiar with, and look at the edit history to see what was done. I think any conscientious moderator can do a faithful job of merging when the situation allows it. It's a bit like surgery and I think mods are hesitant because it is by nature heavy-handed and the opposite of "light-touch", but I don't think it should be quickly labeled "destructive" much less overly-so, until you've examined several examples.
    – uhoh
    Commented Apr 18 at 6:31

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