How should we mark/resolve duplicate questions?

[qubit1]

For example:

Does anywone have problems with LibO 3.5and OWA?

Hy guys, I had Libreoffice 3.3 intalled in my office, and we use Outlook Webmail (aka OWA) as email client, and everything was going well. However, after the Libreoffice was upgraded to 3.4 (and 3.5, as well), the documents created in the new versions and attached to emails can not be downloaded - the files are saved with just 2 (two) bytes. The error does not occur if you save the files with .doc or .xls format. It seems the problem is related to the new XML header in odf files. The Exchange …

It would be great if we could fold duplicate questions together so that we would only see one of them in searches, etc…

Update: Bug filed as fdo#52490

Update 2: We all like @Pedro1’s answer, but the askbot software doesn’t implement that functionality yet. For now, let’s just put a comment directly underneath the question that looks like this:

Duplicate of: runs on ipad? - #2 by tohuwawohu

If ‘duplicate’ is a lot to type, just use ‘dupe’ If you have gained enough karma to tag questions, please tag the q with:

todo-close-as-dupe

That will let the mods know that the question should be closed. Thanks!

[Pedro1]

Currently it is only possible to close a question with the information “Duplicate question”. But there is no possibility to indicate (or link to) of which question it is a duplicate of. It would be nice to have a system similar to Bugzilla where all duplicate questions are clearly marked as duplicates with a link to the only open question.

[qubit1]

Yep, good feature request for upstream. As it stands right now, I always have to add an extra comment to note the link between the two.

[ROSt53]

I do support Pedro’s proposal as well.

[Larrymcg]

IMHO no question should be closed as a duplicate as long as you can’t have a link to the question it is a duplicate of. I run into duplicates and can’t find the original via searching! Broken!!!

[rautamiekka]

No link = no proof = no duplicate to close for. You’ll drop the link as a comment on the OP and then we’re good.

[mkraft]

It would be great if we could fold duplicate questions together so that we would only see one of them in searches, etc.

As someone who recently posted one, a more responsive topic ‘search’ might also help.

I ran such a search before posting (about downloading only a single LO app), but did not get the hits that were cited when the topic was closed due to duplication.

Searches based solely on keywords can be tricky. A dedicated database of ‘often duplicated’ questions might be maintained, arranged alphabetically according to topic.