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A (not that) old question of mine was merged (costing -2 points) with a(n identical) newer one, instead of marking the new one as duplicate (instead mine is marked to have an answer somewhere else).

What are the reasons for such an action? Are our question protected in any way? What are the rules for closing questions, does this case fall in any of them?

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  • 5
    I suspect the -2 reputation is because you had accepted an answer which has now been migrated to the other question, so it's un-done the 2 rep you got for accepting it. Other observations would be that the other question seems more detailed, as does the accepted answer to it.
    – JonK
    Jul 31, 2014 at 12:26
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    @JonK So if I starting searching for old questions and post more detailed versions I'll be closing the old ones replacing them with mine? Jul 31, 2014 at 12:30
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    I would expect that it's handled on a case-by-case basis.
    – JonK
    Jul 31, 2014 at 12:33

2 Answers 2

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I merged it because we received a custom flag that I happen to agree with:

According to some Meta precedence, this should probably be merged with stackoverflow.com/q/24081405/819272

and then a comment on the question even points this out:

I'm asking because of Which duplicate questions should be closed? (it happened to one of my questions too once). Because the other question has a more complete answer. I hope you don't mind. NOTE: I flagged it for moderation attention to have it merged with the linked Q&A. Let them decide.

That's why your question was merged.

0

Presumably the moderator felt that the other question was a higher quality presentation of the question. Age is irrelevant here; the lower quality question should be merged into the higher quality question, rather than merging the newer question into the older question regardless of quality.

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  • Again, I should suppose then that upon improving the quality of old questions, I'd have valid activity and the old questions merged to mine. FWIW there's an edit button; apart from that I find the other question just more verbose, not "of better quality" but then again the bureaucracy of SO though otherwise ... Jul 31, 2014 at 14:26
  • @NikosAthanasiou Why spend all the time trying to turn your question into a better question instead of just using the already better question? Why should a ton more effort be spent just to get to the same place in the end? Being older has no actual intrinsic value. There is no reason to value your question more purely based on its age.
    – Servy
    Jul 31, 2014 at 14:31

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