I voted to close as a dupe/too localized and then answered the .   My solution is correct, It got +1/-4 but OP accepted it. the comments on my answers are saying you should not answer a dupe, or you answered and closed, so that I will earn points. Few thinking as answer is incorrect so got downvotes.  Now I want to delete the answer, I commented and asked OP to un-accept but he is not doing so, can I flag it to moderator?
121629
I made a mistake today.  I . (A C# question, no less. My head is truly hanging in shame.) Unfortunately, by the time this was pointed out, the answer had already been accepted.  Another answer has been posted which is correct. It has more votes than mine, and mine has some downvotes (still a balance of upvotes, but...) Unfortunately because the answer has been accepted, I can't delete my answer. I've edited it so that it's correct - it won't mislead anyone any more - but I'd far rather delete it to let the original correct one float to the top.  In this case I suspect it won't be a real problem - the question author is reasonably regular, so hopefully he'll transfer acceptance to another answer reasonably soon. However, I can easily foresee situations where this wouldn't happen.  Could I suggest that the author of the accepted answer should be able to delete it, if the answer has received some threshold of downvotes (e.g. 3)? Deleting the answer straight away would have been preferable to editing it to be correct, effectively duplicating the effort already put in by Luis Filipe in this case.  I understand the "we don't want to lose value" argument for not letting a question author delete their own question after it's had good answers, but if an answer has received downvotes (so at least some of the community think it's harmful) and the answer's author thinks it should be removed, I think that should override the questioner's choice.
13681
I asked  on the website. It was closed as being off-topic. The off-topic message says If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit your question or leave a comment. all of which I had done approximately 2 hours before the question was closed.  So I would like to know how do I ask the users who cast the vote to close the question after I had commented about the validity of the question about where else should I comment in order to fulfill the criterion regarding commenting in order to explain the question?
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?
9859
What should I do when I see a question that is a duplicate of another one?   Should I answer it? Should I downvote it? Should I comment? Should I edit the question to indicate it's a duplicate? If I can, should I (vote to) close the question? What happens when I vote to close as duplicate? Or: Why did a comment with my name on it just appear? Should I flag it for moderator attention? What about similar or related questions?
68765
Okay, take this question:   I found out that there was essentially a duplicate question of mine, but specified in very different terms than the question I asked. Therefore, to aid future searchers or search engines, I don't want to delete the question -- people searching using the phrases I used should be able to find the duplicate question. But people shouldn't be allowed to post to my question either, because it is a duplicate.  However, there's no way to really tell the engine that the question should be closed as a dupe.  If the community thinks that the question is not a dupe, then one could use the same 5 vote reopen scheme used for current closures.  (For the record, I saw  which is similar, but what I'm looking for is more specific in that I think the only valid closure reason should be duplication)
42458
There is a steady stream of duplicates of  coming in lately. It's got me wondering. Roughly speaking, out of say 100 folks who get this ban, how many    wander away and never interact with SO again?   do the sorts of things that might lift a ban, but don't get it lifted? do the sorts of things they should, and lift the ban? post a question of their own on Meta which we close as a dupe?   Among the continue-to-interact folks, is there a difference in success rate between those who post on Meta about it (motivated, but not good rules-readers, who nonetheless get customized advice) and those who do not (better rules readers, but working to some extent blind) - which do better?  Is there a reasonable chance of recovering from a ban, assuming you care enough to try?
78757
Occasionally, a user will cast a close-as-duplicate vote that's clearly incorrect. If that vote closes the question as duplicate, a gold tag badge user in a tag for the question ("dupehammer user") can then, as I understand it, unilaterally reopen it (thus overriding all the previous votes).  My question is about what happens in cases where the incorrect close vote does not close the post. In such a situation,  in order to clear the close votes on the question. This is clearly somewhat abusive if there are no close-as-duplicate votes, but in the case where all the close votes on the post are close-as-duplicate, doing this at least somewhat seems to tie into the dupehammer's regular functionality.  My question is not really about whether/when I can do this, but rather, when I should; under what circumstances should I as a dupehammer holder close and reopen a post in order to clear incorrect duplicate votes from it? Given that this is a fairly hidden feature at the moment, there's no obvious guidance for the circumstances under which I should use it.  In particular, is it my "duty" as a dupehammer user to clean up incorrect duplicate votes? Or the opposite: should I stay out of using the dupehammer to mess with vote totals, and only use it when the post is actually incorrectly open or closed? Or is the answer somewhere in between?
46739
I have been regularly coming across a new user recently; let's call "him" Bob?  Bob is absolutely convinced of his correctness on every topic. So convinced that he answers questions using completely invalid syntax because he knows how to solve a similar problem.  Commenting on the answer and pointing out the flaws sometimes results in a constructive response but more regularly not. Any downvotes (I haven't) normally results in a semi-unconstructive comment about '"experts"' or a small lecture on how people shouldn't downvote answers where someone was trying to help and that people should learn some manners.  So far, this has degenerated once, with a different user, and the community expressed themselves by downvoting more than usual.  I obviously don't know the particulars of the banning algorithm but it seems unlikely that Bob will be answer banned. He currently has 73 answers, 6 with a positive score and 6 with a negative. Five have been accepted, one an answer with positive score, which means only 10 of Bob's answers have been considered "helpful". People seem to be more wary of downvoting answers than questions, so Bob has escaped the worst. A significant minority of answers I would normally downvote as they're just wrong, but I can't and won't do that.  I am becoming extremely wary of commenting that Bob's answers are incorrect as I can't be bothered to have an argument over it. When combined with the volume of incorrect answers this is detrimental to the site. If wrong answers keep getting posted that people are unwilling to downvote or comment that they are incorrect then they stay around. I can't flag the answers as  they're just technical inaccuracies.  Is there anything that an ordinary user can/should do in this situation? Bob is obviously acting in good faith and I don't think that he should be punished for doing so.  I am deliberately not posting Bob's identity as I'd rather Bob wasn't picked on.
23084
I have in this question:  an example of an answer (of mine) which while valid, especially for developers looking to avoid 3rd party libraries, was not used by the asker. In spite of what were (in my opinion) clear instructions - the user used the wrong regex string even after multiple attempts and did not see their desired results, and so gave up on the solution and downvoted it.  As an answerer defending my rep (especially around a milestone that controls privileges) - my only immediate reaction is to delete the answer so that the downvote no longer counts towards my rep total.  I still strongly feel that this sort of answer would be useful to future visitors who aren't limited by the inability to follow instructions - but why leave it up when all that effort only leads to a loss of rep?  (I apologize for the frustration exhibited in this post.)
96863
I was answering this  and noticed that there was an element of extortion involved which put an extra burden on the OP's question.   Is this allowed?   The deleted comment was in the context of "If you mark this solution as accepted then I will help you", which resulted in the OP having to deal with extra issues as a result - such as changing the database columns and getting null pointer exceptions.   I know it sounds trivial but was dismayed to see that being played out.  I did comment the person who answered, in their retaliation, the downvote of my answer ensued. The person's answer was subsequently marked as accepted (but: meanwhile deleted), and despite that, the OP was new to the arena of Android/Java programming.  What can be done about this?
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).
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?
119355
There was  by  (no, another Jon) that had an incorrect accepted answer with 0 votes. I pointed out in the comments that the accepted answer is wrong and started writing my own answer (a workaround, but anyway!). As I finished my answer and pressed Post Your Answer, I realized the question has just been deleted. This kind of bugs me because I really wanted to share my solution. Should I:  repost the question; wait for someone to revert it if possible?  Update I reposted the question (along with my answer) .
31197
My question concerns . I asked the question, and at the time selected the correct answer. However, time passes and libraries get updated, and now a different answer is actually correct.   I should probably select this new answer as the correct answer, but I feel bad for the person that will lose 15 reputation points even though is answer was the a good answer at that given point in time.  Any suggestions?
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.
88779
I came across  answer earlier today, which I deemed trivial (all it gave was the solution, not an explanation of why it worked or how to prevent this from happening in the future, and was practically copied from the comments above, which were posted about two minutes before).   I left a comment explaining why I downvoted, and a few people took offense to it:     @RichardJ.RossIII You're downvoting an answer that answers the OPs question? – modifiable lvalue        @RichardJ.RossIII habitually violates the rules. Since this answer is not wrong or dangerous and is in fact useful, it should not be downvoted. +1 to compensate. – Jim Balter   My question is, is there a policy against doing this? Should we, as a community, accept and encourage such answers? Personally, I think the whole question should be deleted, as it is far from useful, but that's not the point here.  Generally speaking, I save my upvotes for answers which either helped me personally, or do an exceptional amount towards answering a question. I downvote a lot, as I have high standards (that's not to say that I'm perfect, however).  The bottom line is this: should I be more conservative with my downvoting patterns?
47783
In the  there are flags for duplicate answers. For users without the rep, this is what it looks like:      In  Martijn states that those flags are system generated to help in detecting undesired behaviour. There is also  that guides how to handle those flags.   Looking at the current flags I conclude that answers that are an exact copy of the same user are detected. Shouldn't that same flag also be automatically raised if an exact copy of an answer by another user is found? I assume 'almost' exact copies will generate to much false positives?