I voted to close a question for being a duplicate, then edited the automatic comment for clarification in case the OP does not see how it is a duplicate.  Subsequently the question was closed, hiding my comment (and explanation).   I see the point of this behavior but if this is the case what should I do if I feel further explanation is warranted? Edit the comment for it to be lost later, or make two comments in a row? The idea of intentionally double commenting makes me cringe but that doesn't mean it's unacceptable behavior.
When closing a question as duplicate the &quot;Possible duplicate of&quot; comment is automagically added to the question. However when adding such a comment manually: &quot;possible duplicate of random text&quot; that comment is also removed. To me it doesn't make sense that questions which to not point to a SO / SE question or even comments without any links in it are also removed when the question is closed as a dupe. I just found this out by close voting a question as a dupe of another question, but I also added a manual comment which linked to a user profile (because it contains lots of relevant information for OP and possible future reasons): possible duplicate of this [user](http://stackoverflow.com/users/727208/teresko?tab=answers&amp;sort=votes)'s list.  By the looks of it the script simply checks whether the comment starts with &quot;possible duplicate of&quot; and if it matches it will be removed. The  team also did a quick test with a very simple example which also got thrown away: possible duplicate of testing........  I understand that this issue is minor and there might as well be a technical reason for this (i.e. not having to keep track of automatic vs manual comments), but this behavior is kinda odd to me. I can think of two solutions for this:  keep track of manually vs automagically added dupe comments (again you SO people might have a good reason to not want this). Improve the &quot;dupe comment matcher ™&quot; to at least check whether the comment is in the correct format for &quot;auto dupe comments ™&quot; with a proper link to a question page.
How to make nautilus use file-roller in 17.10 like in 17.04? In Ubuntu 17.10 ubuntu upgraded Nautilus (File Browser) to version 3.26.0. New nautilus is not using file-roller anymore, it has  to an integrated compression mechanism.     This makes it complicated to create encrypted archives and/or different types compression archives that file-roller does provide.  How to make nautilus use file-roller as before?  Related question: database disk image is malformed with dnf on Fedora 29 Is Java "pass-by-reference" or "pass-by-value"? I always thought Java uses pass-by-reference. However, I've seen a couple of blog posts (for example, ) that claim that it isn't (the blog post says that Java uses pass-by-value). I don't think I understand the distinction they're making. What is the explanation? dpkg exit with error "cannot scan updates directory `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/': No such file or directory", how to fix it? Earlier, I had a problem with a package, and I (wrongly) ran this:  rm -r /var/lib/dpkg/*   See also .  Now when I try to upgrade, I get this:  E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it? masoud@masoud-PC:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade  E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable) E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?   and when I use: sudo dpkg --configure -a   I get this:  dpkg: error: cannot scan updates directory `/var/lib/dpkg/updates/': No such file or directory     and for sudo apt-get upgrade -f get:  Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done Correcting dependencies... failed. The following packages have unmet dependencies:  ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch but it is not installable  wine1.4 : Depends: wine1.4-i386 (= 1.4.1-0ubuntu5) but it is not installable E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages. E: Unable to correct dependencies I see ads to other SE sites regularly on the sidebar of SO. Are these questions chosen by hand, or algorithmically? The reason I ask is that there was an ad pointing to  on Seasoned Advice. I'm all for a good laugh I suppose, but is this the kind of question that should be highlighted?  It's obviously a thriving community, but if this were my first exposure to that community, and I saw that the highest-rated answer -- from the user with the highest reputation -- was (and I paraphrase only lightly):  &quot;Why yes, there is tool that can cut cherry tomatoes in half.  It's fantastic for the job.  It's called a freakin' KNIFE!&quot;  would I ever want to visit again, let alone ask a question over there? First impressions count for a lot, and that one missed the mark IMHO. If the selection method is algorithmic, I suppose there's no reliable way to detect sarcasm in a highly-rated answer, but if it's manual, weeeellllllllll ... :) I wonder if it is possible to consider $\mathbb R$ as a Cartesian product $X\times X$ for some set $X$. From the point of view of the dimensionality, there are spaces with a Hausdorff dimension $1/2$ (sort of Cantor sets), but I guess there are other problems in this construction  unrelated to the dimension.  Edited: replying on the comment by Asaf. I want that for all $r\in\mathbb R$ there exists a unique representation $r=\langle x,y\rangle$ where $x\in X$ and $y\in X$. Also, what if we want to have $X$ to be a topological space and $h:X\times X\to\mathbb R$ to be a homeomorphism? Does Google penalize daily updated  tags in sitemaps if the data is not daily updated? is there a way to get the option "Organize Desktop by Name" in Ubuntu 19.10 same as in 18.04? the option in Ubuntu 18.04 is "Organize Desktop by name"    But there is no option available in Ubuntu 19.10 I am given this problem: let $a\ge0$,$b\ge0$, and the sequences $a_n$ and $b_n$ are defined in this way: $a_0:=a$, $b_0:=b$ and $a_{n+1}:= \sqrt{a_nb_n}$ and $b_{n+1}:=\frac{1}{2}(a_n+b_n)$ for all $n\in\Bbb{N}$    To prove is that both sequences converge and that they have the same limit. I don't know how to show this. I have spent 2 hours on this, no sign of success Is it possible to have a different background for each workspace? I normally use 4 different workspaces for different things, and they are always the same. Can I make a different background image for each one of them?   I would like an answer that works for GNOME 3 desktop environment, Unity and the Classic desktop environment.     This question has multiple answers covering different Ubuntu versions: Can I get cheaper plane tickets by using a VPN? In a Youtube video by ADVChina, the speaker is recommending using a VPN in China for various reasons, and to sign up using his referral code.  He says there are various practical uses including "You could also go and get cheaper plane tickets by hopping around different countries." and shows a screenshot of a flight website called KAYAK, with the VPN software changing his country to Italy.  Is it possible to get cheaper plane tickets by using a VPN in this way? I've never heard of KAYAK, but if I use something like Skyscanner, is it common for tickets to be priced differently depending on which country the user's IP is from?  Is it because of different taxes in different countries? So could it be illegal to get discounts like this? Or is there some pricing strategy from airlines to charge different amounts depending on the country of purchase? A single word for someone who spends their wealth very foolishly Transforming Differential Equation to a Kummer's Equation I'm trying to transform an equation of the form $$ yw^{\prime\prime}(y) - [b - ay] w^\prime(y) - [d + ey]w(y) = 0 $$ into the form of a Kummer's or confluent hypergeometric differential equation: $$ y w^{\prime\prime}(y) + [f - y] w^\prime(y) + g w(y)  = 0 $$ I know it may have something to do with merging two of the singularities of the original equation, and maybe doing something with $y$, making it $\frac{y}{b}$ and taking b to infinity, but I don't know and can't find the details for this process, and for my equation specifically. There's not too much difference between the two but just enough so that I can't get it. Thanks in advance for any help! Is the cube root of a prime number rational? Why do we use "have" with does and not "has"? Consider the following:   $1 = 1^2$ $2 + 2 = 2^2$ $3 + 3 + 3 = 3^2$   Therefore,   $\underbrace{x + x + x + \ldots + x}_{x \textrm{ times}}= x^2$   Take the derivative of lhs and rhs and we get:   $\underbrace{1 + 1 + 1 + \ldots + 1}_{x \textrm{ times}} = 2x$   Which simplifies to:   $x = 2x$   and hence    $1 = 2$.     Clearly something is wrong but I am unable pinpoint my mistake. Including a relative path to a class file When to use "If I was" vs. "If I were"? If I was... If I were...   When is it correct to use "If I was" vs. "If I were" in standard English? How does bash interpret the equal operator with no surrounding spaces in a conditional? The following script does not behave as I would have expected.  Adding spaces around the '=' in the conditional made it perform how I wanted, but it got me thinking, what is it actually doing inside the conditional?  #!/bin/bash S1='foo' S2='bar' if [ $S1=$S2 ]; then     echo "S1('$S1') is equal to S2('$S2') fi echo $S1 echo $S2   The output is:  S1('foo') is equal to S2('bar') foo bar   The contents of S1 and S2 don't change from what they are assigned, so the = doesn't perform an assignment. Which is correct: "one or more is" or "one or more are"? Should the phrase be "one or more is...", or "one or more are..."?