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There are two questions on SO where the phrasing is such that it leads me to believe the posters are one and the same... Question 1 and Question 2.

This quote is from question 1:

I have images in drawable and on a database i have this fields, name,qty,price and imageName. i want to retrieve all list of imageNames and display the corresponding image on a listView together with other fields in the database.

This quote from question 2:

I have images in drawable and a database which has column names such as price and imageName...so I want to retrieve all list of imageNames and display the corresponding image on a listView together with other fields in the database.

Looking at the accounts, there doesn't seem to be any other indication of a duplicate account, so I'm not sure if I should flag it or not.

share|improve this question
6  
No need to call them out here. Just flag one of their posts and explain why you are doing so. – Bart Jun 13 '12 at 13:33
2  
They might be both taking the same class? Or have forgotten their user-name. As long as they're not up-voting each other why does it matter? – ben is uǝq backwards Jun 13 '12 at 13:34
    
As I read in a couple other related questions, the potential to upvote your own question is enough to make it matter. – Barak Jun 13 '12 at 13:37
5  
@Ben It matters because duplicate questions are noise, and if they are from the same user, it's abusive noise on top of it all. – Dave Newton Jun 13 '12 at 13:38
    
@Dave, I meant from a "duplicate accounts" perspective. Obviously still vote to close as a duplicate and down-vote if it's a bad question. However, something can't be defined as abusive if there is no abuse occurring and you have to allow for genuine mistakes to happen. – ben is uǝq backwards Jun 13 '12 at 14:10
    
@Ben Of course--but you asked why it mattered, so I'm saying why it matters to me :) – Dave Newton Jun 13 '12 at 14:12
up vote 5 down vote accepted

The avatars associated with the accounts are different, and the accounts have different names. There isn't any evidence that the accounts are used from the same person; using the same phrase doesn't mean the question has been used from the same person.

There isn't anything wrong in having two accounts, as far as they are not used to, e.g., gain reputation, make other users gain reputation, vote twice to close a question.

If you notice that one account is used to ask a question that is then closed, and the other account is used to ask the same question, or a similar one, then you could flag one of the posts written using one of the accounts, and explain what you have noticed.

share|improve this answer
2  
It's not the same phrase... it's the same paragraph. :p And, according ot more than one moderator, having duplicate accounts IS wrong, due to the potential for abuse. Doesn't matter if there is any actual abuse or not, the potential is there. – Barak Jun 13 '12 at 14:00
    
Using the same paragraph already used in a question IS NOT a proof that the accounts are created from the same person. As far as I recall, moderators don't merge two accounts that don't interact with each other, or they are not used to "damage" another user. If I see two duplicated accounts (i.e. same avatar and same username), where one account is used to ask a question, and the other is used to post comments as answers, then I would probably merge them. – kiamlaluno Jun 13 '12 at 14:13
2  
@Barak No, it is not as long as they don't do "sockpuppet-y things" – ajax333221 Jun 13 '12 at 15:22
    
Hmm, didn't find that one when I was searching. Thanbks for pointing it out. – Barak Jun 13 '12 at 15:32

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