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In my fields of expertise, I often reply to questions which have been asked many times on Stack Overflow. I keep rewriting almost identical answers because answers consisting of just links to existing answers elsewhere are frowned upon here.

The thing is, many people ask questions and I answer them, but they never bother to accept any of the given answers to their respective questions or even provide feedback, for that matter. So my answers (or other people's) might have upvotes, but the questions are still listed as unaccepted. Hence, I cannot use them to mark other questions as their duplicates. This leads to lots of duplicates on the platform simply due to the fact that I cannot select an unaccepted question as a duplicate. Ironically, I am contributing to what I strive to avoid, just because I want to help.

Is there a better approach for what I am doing? Wouldn't it make sense to be able to mark a question as a duplicate of another one with unaccepted answers, given the user doing so has a certain minimum reputation?

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    Have you considered writing a canonical Q&A yourself for cases like this? You could then accept the answer, and then link all the dupes to your canonical. You also might want to consider making them Community Wikis in order to avoid allegations that you are doing this for personal benefit.
    – cigien
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 2:22
  • Thanks for those ideas. Occasionally, I have written canonical Q&A myself. The "personal benefit" bias others might have has kept me from doing it more often, but maybe that is the path to go. I have never had community wikis on my radar, maybe that is something worth exploring too. Thanks, @cigien.
    – kriegaex
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 2:50
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    As far as I remember marking as dupe doesn't require the target has an accepted answer, just any answer that is upvoted Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 3:36
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    Dupe-closing doesn't require the dupe target to have an accepted answer. Voting to close as not reproducible. Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 3:56
  • Why don't you vote to close as a duplicate instead? Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:25
  • Anyway, it is way too late in this time zone (or early). Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:26
  • Firstly, I was unaware of the option to close as duplicate without specifying what it is a duplicate of. Even if that was possible, it would not be constructive. I want to close as "A is a duplicate of B", but for that B needs to have an accepted answer. Closing as "not reproducible" would be giving a false reason for closing, and I do not want to do that either.
    – kriegaex
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:27
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    "Firstly, I was unaware of the option to close as duplicate without specifying what it is a duplicate of." - what? That's not an option. No one said it was an option. Where did you get that idea? Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:30
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    When I said "Voting to close as not reproducible.", I was talking about the vote I'm casting on this question, because the question is based on a false premise. I'm not saying that you should vote to close duplicate questions as not reproducible. Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:32
  • After what you just wrote, I tried again and am baffled! For years I could not vote to close questions as duplicates if they had no accepted answers and now suddenly I can! This must have changed recently. Does anyone know when it has? I am 100% sure this was impossible before. I had tried many times in the past until I finally gave up trying. Now this would actually make the question obsolete as of today, but I would appreciate an answer about when this rule was relaxed and a link to the corresponding announcement. Then I would accept the answer and we could keep it for reference.
    – kriegaex
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:50
  • 8 years ago meta.stackexchange.com/q/165928/145673 Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:51
  • We might have a misunderstanding. I do not want to know about when the behaviour I described was established but when the restriction was relaxed again. I swear I tried marking questions as duplicates of others many times and was refused because the question had no accepted answer. Or is it maybe a combination of unaccepted and answer not having any upvotes? Sorry for being confused and hence for causing confusion, I do believe I am a reasonably experienced SO user, but I do not know the ins and outs of voting, flagging, moderation etc. I am mostly concerned with commenting and answering.
    – kriegaex
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 4:57
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    I don't think dupe-closing has ever been restricted to questions with accepted answers. Martin Smith's link goes to a post made when the upvoted-or-accepted restriction went in; before that, you could dupe-close with a completely unanswered target. Currently, I think the requirement is one of the following: upvoted answer on the target, accepted answer on the target, or both questions posted by the same user (to handle people reposting their questions). Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 5:02
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    Thanks, that is the information I was looking for. Maybe this is why now I cannot reproduce it anymore with the questions that were problematic in the past. I guess my answers just got upvotes in the meantime. If this question gets enough close votes, I will not be angry. But instead of a long string of comments and misunderstandings I would have preferred someone writing an actual, comprehensive answer which I could have rewarded by accepting same. Anyway, thanks very much to everyone involved. 🙂
    – kriegaex
    Commented Jan 12, 2021 at 5:03

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