How should duplicate questions be handled in Stack Exchange?
According to Stack Exchange co-founder Joel Spolsky, we should only close real duplicates, and according to co-founder Jeff Atwood, there are three kinds of duplicates: cut-and-pastes, accidental duplicates, and borderline duplicates (requiring judgement as applied by the community).
How to answer the op’s question in meta Stack Exchange?
Answer the OP’s question. Even though the OP probably needs something else, never neglect to answer the question they have actually asked first and not the question you think they want answered. In some cases that answer may be “Y is not possible”. Too often I see responses (comments) asking “why do you need that?”. This gives the OP nothing.
Where does the question mark go when you might ask?
Who did it? you might ask. If you use quotation marks, the question mark definitely goes inside, as it marks what you’re quoting as a question: “Who did it?” you might ask. The question mark goes outside when what you’re quoting isn’t a question, but your statement about it is: Who wrote “Parting is such sweet sorrow”?
How should duplicate questions be handled in meta stack?
Duplicate questions are not necessarily bad; different descriptions of the same problem help future visitors to find the answers they’re looking for. Try to remember that beginners are still learning terminology, and even the simplest of answers might be eluding them simply because they did not know what to search for.
Is there a way to merge duplicate questions?
Merging: Moderators can merge duplicate questions, which moves all of the answers to the same question. This only works if the questions have identical or very similar wording. If you think two questions should be merged, check whether the answers as worded would make perfect sense on the other question.
What’s the point of closing a question as a duplicate?
On main sites, the main point of closing questions as duplicates is to point users to better answers; closing a question as a duplicate of an unanswered question defeats this purpose.