In the search of a question

in Math Mods' Office, 6 hours ago, by amWhy

I'm having difficulty finding discussions about "duplicate answers": Not among answers to a specific question, but answerers who have previously answered a question, see that question again, or a slight variation, and copy and paste the first answer to the newly encountered question, and maybe add no more than a line to the original?

in Math Mods' Office, 6 hours ago, by amWhy

My thinking is that if one can answer a new question with an answer one's written earlier, one should vote to close the "newer appearance" of the question, rather than copy and paste an answer that worked previously.

in Math Mods' Office, 6 hours ago, by amWhy

@MartinSleziak My search using "duplicate answers" on meta yielded posts about duplicate questions, as well as questions about answers the asker considers duplicates of two or more answers by two or more answerers to the same question post. I'm trying to learn or track down discussions of two or more question posts, answered by some user X, using essentially the same answer (even copied and pasted) that user X has already provided in an earlier question post.

in Math Mods' Office, 6 hours ago, by amWhy

Any suggestions, @MartinSleziak? I should probably search meta.se, too.

in Math Mods' Office, 36 secs ago, by Martin Sleziak

@amWhy I've reposted your request to find discussions about this topic on meta(s) to the searching chat room.

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but I have found this on mathematics meta: What is the etiquette for reposting one's own answer?

17

Q: What is the etiquette for reposting one's own answer?

At one point I wrote a fairly detailed explanation of why equivalence relations on a set and partitions of that set are essentially the same thing. The issue came up in a new question again. The new question is not a duplicate of the old one, so closure as a duplicate is not appropriate. (The ori...

Here is another related discussion on local meta: Should identical answers on questions which are abstract duplicates of each other be allowed? You may notice that the post contains also several links to the main meta.

17

Q: What is the etiquette for reposting one's own answer?

At one point I wrote a fairly detailed explanation of why equivalence relations on a set and partitions of that set are essentially the same thing. The issue came up in a new question again. The new question is not a duplicate of the old one, so closure as a duplicate is not appropriate. (The ori...

discussion etiquette answers

10

Q: Should identical answers on questions which are abstract duplicates of each other be allowed?

Let's say that a question is posted, asking how to find $$\sum_{k=1}^n2k^2.$$ It is proposed that the question be closed as a duplicate of a much older one, asking how to find $$\sum_{k=1}^nk^2,$$ but before the closure is complete, a user posts identical answers on both questions explaining how ...

discussion deletion exact-duplicates

On Meta Stack Exchange there is also a separate tag duplicate-answers. Probably some related posts can also be found there.

Here is a comment (in chat) from a moderator:

in Math Mods' Office, Apr 29 '17 at 19:27, by Daniel Fischer

@MartinSleziak The system detects identical answers by the same user, it doesn't detect when user B copies an answer from user A and posts it. (Unfortunately, but checking the entire site for every post would probably cause way too much load.)

This post on Meta Stack Exchange is tagged faq: Is it acceptable to add a duplicate answer to several questions?

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Q: Is it acceptable to add a duplicate answer to several questions?

Let's say there is a user who has found a satisfactory answer to a common question asked on Stack Overflow (or other Stack Exchange website). This answer may be a snippet of code, or an addon, or a framework, or something else. Is it acceptable for this user to formulate an answer for one que...

discussion faq duplicate-answers

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$Mathematics$ In the search of a question