It seems to me like I can pop into any random question, and unless it's a borderline case, there's always one answer that is duplicated 3-4 times throughout. Some pertinent cases:
- How to convince my wife that my best friend and I are just friends?
- How do I tell a love interest I'm probably too old for her?
- How can I get my mom to accept me being introverted?
These are just a couple that have been put on the HNQ, but I'm sure there's many other cases. There's nothing to flag these as, and protecting a question only goes so far to prevent this sort of thing. There is a message that asks users to read existing questions before posting, but it seems this is being ignored. It can be incredibly frustrating when 4 people make the same (highly upvoted) answer, and when sorting by votes all other points of view are drowned out. Personally I feel that makes the answer pool a bit suffocated, a kind of echo chamber for those who agree with the answers.
This isn't the first time this has been an issue. Like really, this is a serious issue. I really think we need some sort of system in place.
Is there a better way we can handle these duplicate answers? I had a couple ideas that might be possible.
- Automatically flag any answers after a question is protected for a review queue to check for dupes.
- Provide a flag for duplicate answers for mods. I'm not fond of causing mods more work though.
- Raise the minimum rep required to answer after a question is protected. (I personally think 125 would be sufficient)
Can we come to a consensus on which idea (or other ideas) would be the best way to handle this issue (if we feel it's a big enough problem at all)?