Of the vote-to-close reasons, marking as "duplicate" seems unique in that:   It immediately results in the OP getting his question answered It frequently requires knowledge of the subject comparable to what it would take to answer the question directly as well as requiring knowledge of the SO repository or ability/willingness to search It involves forgoing reputation which would otherwise likely accrue to the person identifying the duplicate   Similarly, adding an additional vote with the same dup target seems akin to "upvoting" an existing answer.  As such, what would be the effects of incentivizing the first mark-as-duplicate voter with something equivalent to an "accept" or "upvote" rep gain once the question is closed, even if a smaller amount (e.g. 5 points)?
10796
deals with various ways of rewarding the finding of duplicates, a tough and increasingly necessary janitorial task.  Here's a concrete suggestion:   Reward the finder of a duplicate with +10 points if the question gets closed as a dupe. If multiple duplicates are found, reward all finders whose suggestion was voted for at least once by another user. (The limitation is to avoid gaming by making frivolous suggestions when it's obvious that a question is going to get closed as a duplicate.) Reward each following closevoter who picks one of the previously suggested dupes with +2 points if the question gets closed. Punish everyone involved (dupe-finders and dupe-voters) with -5 points, and revoke all rep gained from the dupe-voting, if a question closed as duplicate gets reopened.   A punishment for mis-voting is going to be controversial but in my eyes, it is absolutely essential. Finding a good dupe is a work of love: You need to make sure you understand the OP's question, and you need to scan every potential duplicate for whether it really contains an answer that will help the OP. Everyone dupe-votes carelessly from time to time, so the threat of punishment needs to be present to keep everyone on their toes, just as the threat of downvoting does when you post an answer.  If you think +10 is too high a reward: Consider that finding a duplicate can often be more work than writing an answer, and a correct answer usually nets you at least 10 points, if not much more.   If you think -5 is too much of a punishment: -2 might work as well, although I really think there should be a harsh punishment on an unfair dupe-closing.
117959
It's been stated previously that duplicates have their uses. They sometimes indicate that a particular question couldn't be found with however the user searched for it.  Now while merging is often useful it seems like it destroys the duplicate, which to me seems to diminish the "wide net" aspect.  At moderator's discretion, it might be worth merging the answers but leaving the duplicate as a locked, empty question that points to where the answers have gone. The original question wouldn't need a link back to the empty, locked version. But this way you still get that linkage.
63812
I just  marked as a duplicate by a user, who didn't seem to have read the content of the post, and left a "Read the documentation." comment,  without even giving any additional explanation.   The post then got enough votes to be re-opened after other users pointed out that the proposed dupe wasn't the same problem.  My problem was eventually solved, but I couldn't help but wonder if users should get some sort of notice or warning for incorrectly closing a post that is eventually reopened?
93134
I just got a review audit where the "late answer" was a duplicate of the accepted answer, but flagging it on that basis failed the review. That seems like a bug to me.  Question here:   I found that by clicking the question to view the entire Q&amp;A, and noticed that the copy was from a generic "user12345" account (probably with 1 rep as well) and the original from a real-looking account. Viewing the whole Q&amp;A is often useful when reviewing, especially late answers (which are often repeats of earlier points, disagreements with those, or random addendums better submitted as edits). I looked at the duplicate and thought "weird, rep harvesting maybe?" so I clicked "needs moderator attention" and wrote "copy and paste of accepted answer". FAIL!  I think that this review type can't ever work, because to avoid the problem I found you'd need to make up whole new "late answers" which by definition the review bot can't know anything useful about. Either that or to pass you'd just need to take any action at all, including upvoting the original of the duplicated answer. Which I didn't do, BTW, because I had no idea or opinion about the question or answer.  (this is not a duplicate of "What are review tests", it predates that and focuses on a particular defect within the process. See the comments below).
48920
Since the  to the close as duplicate mechanism it is a lot more visible to the OP that there is/might be a duplicate to their question. Empirically, I've noticed a lot more people agreeing, in the comments under their question, that their question is a dupe.   For instance, :        I'm aware that allowing  is  (back in the stone age) but now Stack Exchange is so much larger, and Stack Overflow is groaning under the weight of questions, I think this should be partially revisited.  Based on the principle that the simplest way to keep a site clean is to have as many people as possible nibbling away, I propose that the OP gets granted a binding close-as-duplicate vote.  It should simply be an additional line in the banner, which is . It might be something like this:     This question may already have an answer here:   &nbsp; "" 3 answers   &nbsp; Does this fully answer your question?  Yes / No   I'm not wedded to the Yes / No thing I just can't think of a better way at the moment.  Clicking on Yes would take the OP to the close as duplicate dialogue with that question highlighted. If there are multiple duplicate questions you'd need to ask the OP multiple times. A No could be used to track the relative success of the project, i.e.   Whether the question subsequently gets closed. Whether the question gets reopened again. How many times the OP actually clicks. How many times the OP disagrees with the analysis of the community.   Potentially, a No could be used to open a comment dialogue asking the OP to explain why they think their question is not a duplicate thereby stopping them simply putting "this is not a duplicate" in the question and formalising this process somewhat. Not sure about this idea...  I do not think this should be restricted by reputation, anyone should be able to close their own question as a duplicate. It gives people with lower reputation a more positive experience of the closing process and emphasises the importance of duplicate finding.  Most importantly, self-closes should not, initially, count towards the question ban. We can help new users learn how to use a lot more of the site than they might otherwise see and encourage them to search for duplicates more thoroughly. If the OP then goes on to do the same thing 10 times in a row then you can start using it toward the ban as they're obviously using the users as a personalised search service but at least the first 3-4 times this should not have any effect.  This question is, deliberately, only requesting 20% of the linked question (from 2009) and then only based on the new UI. The linked question asks for binding migration votes etc, which I do not want to see and I am not requesting a binding close-as-duplicate for the OP until someone else has already voted to close (though I think if the OP has 3k rep this might be allowable). This, I hope, addresses the concern's raised in the linked question and explains why this is not a duplicate of that question.
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Update: This has been implemented according to the .    OK, so  is the  time I've come across a perfectly valid bug report here on meta.SO that was closed as a duplicate, and the question it was closed as a duplicate of then deleted.  Since I don't have 10k here on MSO, I can't really tell when or why those questions were deleted, but I assume there were valid reasons for it.  However, regardless of the reasons for the deletion, having the questions that were closed as duplicates of the deleted question remain closed seems like a disservice to users.  Presumably, a duplicate of a deleted question either:   is no longer a duplicate, and should therefore be reopened; or is crap, just like the deleted question, and should therefore also be deleted.   I therefore propose that, when a question is deleted, any other questions closed as duplicates of it should be automatically flagged for reopening and/or deletion.  I'll leave the exact implementation details for the devs to decide, but one option might be to just add the dupes to both the reopen and the deletion queue, and let the reviewers in those queues decide their fate.  Or perhaps the 10k auto-flag system used e.g. for "questions closed without comment" could be adapted for this purpose too.  Edit: I like  of automatically adding dupes of deleted questions to the reopen review queue, but with the "leave closed" button replaced with "delete" / "recommend deletion" (since just leaving the question closed is not really a useful option in this situation).
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In , closing a question for some reasons (then off-topic and not a real question) caused the Community user to downvote the question.  Officially, . Yet I still observe that closing a question as  instantly decreases a question's score by 1, and reopening increases the score by 1. I can't swear that this is systematic but I've definitely seen it happen many times.  's a recent example. The timeline shows that the question received two downvotes. But while it was closed as unclear, its score was -3, and since it was reopened its score is back at -2.  I'm tagging this  because the site behavior contradicts the . I don't mean this as an opinion either way on whether automatic downvotes should or should not happen: just get the story straight, please.
21862
I'm looking around for answers to my questions on several Stack Exchange sites and the good boy that I am I don't want to ask duplicate questions.  Often I find that there are other people who asked the same questions, sometimes years earlier, but still don't have an answer. I'd figure I could bump these back to top, but if I don't have enough rep for a edit (or comment), how would I do that?  Or, in that case, I should just post a 'newer' version of the same question?
76793
I just agreed with a duplicate suggestion for one of my .  It's now showing that it was closed as a duplicate by the person who raised the duplicate suggestion and Community.  Since it was my yes this solves my problem click that triggered the closing/status change shouldn't I get credit instead?
33794
Voted to close a question based on "lack of minimal understanding".  Later realized the question was a duplicate.  How to I change vote to mark as duplicate instead?
58519
Some questions are getting closed as duplicates - good, the system is working. Unfortunately, some are getting closed as duplicates of other questions which are already deleted. This leaves all 1-9,999 reputation users left scratching their heads when they try to view the duplicate. Even worse, imagine being the author of the question and having your question closed as a duplicate when the original question isn't accessible.  I think something is wrong. Today I undeleted a question (left it closed) since it was referenced in the close-reason for another question. Comments indicated that people were clearly irritated that they could not access the duplicate     [Comment] Ok, who thought it was a good idea to close this as duplicate of a deleted question, which most people cannot even see? For the record, I'm reopening - clearly there's enough interest in this question. – Kobi 14 hours ago   ---   [Comment] The PosibleDuplicate link is broken. Voting to reopen. – Rahul G 7 hours ago   ---   [Flag] Closed as duplicate of a deleted question, fail. Thanks for moderating. – {username removed} 14 hours ago   My undelete-action was short-lived, as a few users returned to delete the post again.  It certainly cannot be desirable to reference posts that the vast majority of users cannot even see, especially when the author of the redundant question cannot see (at the time of writing this, the author has a reputation of 18).  I'm not sure what the solution is to this, but I'd like to hear some ideas.  Questions  Question:  Duplicate of:
24240
I answered to  and it was marked as possible duplicate. Then I looked at  (the original question) and thought that my answer can be helpful there, even though the question has an already accepted answer. Should I copy my answer to the original question? Would it be better to wait the possible duplicate to be closed?
68089
Currently, when the original poster of the question votes to close a question, the close vote is attributed to the Community user, which can lead to confusion on who actually voted to close the question.    Yes, it does say that the question author authorized a pending duplicate vote and whatnot, but that isn't indicated anywhere except for in a hidden thing that most won't look to see.  Like nicael , there really isn't a point to hiding that the question author approved a duplicate vote. Even if they didn't at the most specific level vote to close, it's makes for a better user experience to have something more like this:
51857
This is somewhat related to this question:    But relates more to the senario that when a vote has been locked for a particular post, the user can edit the post (by maybe just adding new line or something) and subsequently the user can then change the vote the that was previously locked.  It's a strange feature but essentially renders the functionality of locking votes useless for users with enough points to edit posts.
72540
I´m not sure if it is already reported. But when i review the following post  and take a look at the duplicate, voting on question, answers and comments is disabled.  But the accepted answer of the duplicate question has the Link "show 2 more comments" and when I click it, the additional comments are loaded and then I can vote and flag the comments of the accepted answer.  Before:   After:
6290
Having just  from any of the queues, it was reviewing close votes; however, this audit was flawed in that I didn't even cast a close vote.  Often I press the Close button to preview greater detail and sentiment of the closure, spawning the Why should this question be closed dialog box:    Especially for duplicates, where functionality is solely dependent on spawning this dialog.  From Closing > Duplicate, I can search or view selected duplicates:    Although, I realize general closure reasons are summarized on the page:    This question had 6-upvotes, but seemed very localized referencing subjective query is "taking too long" and even had a sqlfiddle link.  Maybe overly broad regarding performance tuning, the OP was posting like a forum with two answer posts to his own question  and  with one of those answers asking follow-up questions.    Wanting to gauge community response, current closure totals struck my curiosity.  So, I pressed the Close button and boom - oh, the humanity!  I failed, and didn't even cast a close vote.    Votes are not cast until a reason for closure is selected and Vote to Close is pressed.  Taking any review very seriously on this site, it only seems fair that my review quality is tested through actionable steps instead of clicking for more detailed information, leveraging the functional design of the close vote user interface.  Sure, it's complex to seed fake vote totals, and then there's controversy of mindless voting in the majority or people who simply cherry pick 4-vote questions.  Still though, it seems unfair I should hesitate to review further information of vote totals and duplicates before skipping due to the implementation of this audit.
97989
Proposal: Allow bounties on questions that are marked as duplicate, which may have valuable answers.  (or make duplicate questions not having the status 'on hold')    Motivation:  It regularly happens that a closed question has a really good answer. This particularly occurs with questions that are marked as duplicate (questions without intrinsic problems and that may have received good answers before being closed).  Therefore it might occur that a person wishes to place a bounty on the question to reward an existing answer or bring attention to it. However this is not possible under the current system. A duplicate question is a closed question.   This closed status has the undesirable side-effect that the answers given to that question are treated as second class content which can not receive bounties (but also the site does not direct to them, closed questions refer to the parent duplicate question but the other way around does not occur, there is a 'linked' and 'related' list but they are much less visible and in some interfaces, like phone, they do not appear).  Of course one might argue that questions can be merged (or get rid of the on hold status, or repost the answer on the duplicate). But merging would destroy the duplicate (and duplicates are also considered useful). In addition, duplicate questions may be different enough that you can not merge them, or at least it involves a lot of noisy bureaucracy and discussion.    Practical example case, sketch of situation:  I have searched for duplicate questions with bounties (). I found not so many but it did actually show up an answer of my own. .  I believe that this is a good example case where the closed question is still valuable and maybe shouldn't be closed for that reason (yet the 'duplicate link' is still useful). Also, the answer would not be suitable under the duplicate question and merging is not appropriate. The question is duplicate but asked in a very different way and with a different viewpoint angle in mind.