[borkabrak]

Good point. I think there's real value in replacing even just the verbiage of "Closed as duplicate" with something like a "Related Questions" section. It would remove a lot of the hostility, intentional or not, felt by newcomers making their inevitable mistakes, which goes right to the heart of one of the major goals Joel mentioned in the article.

[CodeCube]

I'd take that a step further, in that adding a link to a related (or even duplicate) question shouldn't _close_ that question, it should be a potentially valid answer to this person's question.

If enough people upvote the link to the originally posted question, or even if it gets selected as the answer, then SO can simply _not index_ this question. But the poster doesn't feel rejected, and can in fact choose to continue engaging in his question in cases where it's subtly different.

[artpepper2]

That's a great point. The community votes on whether an answer is helpful, so why not vote on whether a related question is actually related?

[olavk]

It does work like that to some extent, since closing as a duplicate require a certain number of votes. But this could probably be improved as per the suggestion, as it seems many people have experienced inappropriate "closed as duplicate". It seems to be one of the major complaints in this thread.

Sometimes the duplicate is blatant, but in many case it is really a judgment call. In my experience I more often vote for "reopen" than for "close", so there are definitely different attitudes to what is considered a duplicate.

Alternatively, it could be the decision of the one asking the question. Just as they select the "accepted" answer, they could choose to accept or reject the duplicate as appropriate.

[s73v3r_]

There's already related questions on the side.

Here's something I've never really understood: What is the downside to leaving the question up, even if it is an actual duplicate? Instead of "closing as duplicate", just answer it with a link to what you feel is the question it duplicates. If that works, then the original will score higher on Google, and if it turns out it's not a duplicate, the asker is able to provide more information as to why that answer doesn't work for them.

[cnaeotnh34nh]

They actually do that, too, at least for some period of time. I've searched for a particular question, had a SO result pop up as a result, then clicked on it to find it has a header that says, "This is a dupe of question xyz" with a link to the original. The dupe is still up and may still have answers. So it seems to me that they already do this.

[olavk]

They only close for writing answers to the question, the question (and answers written before it was closed) is still up with a link to the duplicate.

The asker can edit the question to provide more information and the question can be nominated for reopening. It only requires 5 votes to reopen, IIRC.

[s73v3r_]

But why? What's the point of all those hoops, other than to discourage new users?

[olavk]

Well if the question is a legitimate duplicate then it is clearly a win for everyone, not least the one asking the question, since now you have a link to answers to your problem which have already been written. Which means now your problem is solved.