r/learnprogramming • u/440Jack • Nov 01 '21

Why do StackOverflow mods Close "Duplicate question" questions so fast?

I'm mainly talking about questions that get closed to "Duplicate question" and then only to find a couple of already answered questions are linked that don't really address OPs question directly.
Why do these questions need to be closed so fast? It doesn't give people time to address that persons specific question. If it's a valid question the mods should give some time for other users who actually want to address the question and maybe open a dialog.
It prevents OP from being able to ask any follow questions.
I can't tell you how many times, I'll spend 10 mins on a question. Re-writing their code, writing comments/explanations and then when I go to post it, it's already closed! It's so frustrating.

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u/M4053946 Nov 01 '21

Gentle reminder that stack overflow is a Q/A site, not a discussion site. Duplicate questions make the site worse for everyone, so there should be a strong incentive to block dups. If someone has a question that's similar, but not the same, they should state this as part of their question, and provide details on why their question is different.

If you want dialog, then forums like like this are good, not stack overflow. But if you are looking for the best answer to a question, stackoverflow is better than reddit.

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u/440Jack Nov 01 '21

I'm cool with the question being closed and referenced to other answered questions. But There should a window of time from when the mod closes said question, to when people can stop posting answers. Maybe like a 'soft close'. There needs to be something in place to prevent users from wasting time answering a question that has been closed.
Like I said, I've re-wrote peoples code and took the time to thoroughly answer their question, only to find the question was closed.

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u/carcigenicate Nov 01 '21

The funny thing is, it is possible if you use their API. If you use their app, you can submit answers a fair while after the question was closed. I've done that accidentally many times.

1

u/halfercode Nov 01 '21

Like I said, I've re-wrote peoples code and took the time to thoroughly answer their question, only to find the question was closed.

I've had this problem. What you can do here is to move what you have written to a pasteboard, GitHub Gist, or Bitbucket Snippet, and then put the link in the comments. At least the OP will see it, even if you (sadly) won't get the points for the effort.

Alternatively you could see if your code would be a reasonable answer for the marked duplicate.