2
$\begingroup$

I really hate asking duplicate questions, i.e. questions that have been asked once in some form or the other. I search by the exact words, but I can't find any questions and I go ahead and post the same. When someone points me to a duplicate I want to delete the question which is not allowed because the question already has upvoted answers.

Should original question posters not be allowed to delete their own questions if they are found to be duplicates?

$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ You can, as long as there is not yet an answer with a positive score (1+). $\endgroup$
    – Kevin
    Oct 25, 2014 at 7:35
  • $\begingroup$ Yes, but in my case and I guess in many other cases, there could be answers which have positive scores $\endgroup$
    – skv
    Oct 25, 2014 at 7:36
  • $\begingroup$ this is a general SE problem. I hate it too. $\endgroup$
    – d'alar'cop
    Oct 25, 2014 at 12:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1
$\begingroup$

Why do you want to delete these?

Duplicates are meant to be "signposts," to help others find the question they're looking for. If someone searches using the same or similar search terms as you, chances are they won't find the right question. But if they find your duplicate, it can lead them there.

For more discussion on this topic, see this post on the Mother Meta and the questions in the "linked" sidebar there.

$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ Ok got it...Thanks I guess my perspective was "Duplicates are bad", not sure why I got this idea though... $\endgroup$
    – skv
    Oct 25, 2014 at 13:58
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @skv Well, like Doorknob said, a duplicate is useful if there are search terms that someone can use that'll pull up the duplicate, but not the original. You might've gotten the idea that duplicates are bad from the large number of negatively-voted dupes from Stack Overflow; there's a large number of low score ones there because many either cover the same search terms (showing lack of research) or do not cover any at all. $\endgroup$
    – Dennis Meng
    Oct 26, 2014 at 6:00
  • $\begingroup$ @DennisMeng agreed, that could be the source, but I am sure we have ways of dealing with them as well, through moderators, frankly the question was a result of the guilt of having posted a duplicate and wanted to get rid of it and the answer actually did that $\endgroup$
    – skv
    Oct 26, 2014 at 6:05

You must log in to answer this question.

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