This unhelpful error message is for duplicate questions, not answers. It's completely out of context and doesn't make any sense at all.


Here is a link to the answer that needs moderator attention:


  • 6
    check this : stackoverflow.com/questions/22684807/… .. the user posted the exact same answer before and he shouldn't ... it has nothing to do with the answer of user5101998 Oct 20 '18 at 0:41
  • 1
    OK but that's to a different question. I've posted the same answer to different questions before.
    – Chloe
    Oct 20 '18 at 0:47
  • 1
    Hmmmm that's a funny result of the duplicate message. If I recall correctly, users were flagging "Possible duplicate of..." comments as unwelcoming, and a Mod got fed up with those flags and requested a regex to block flags saying "Duplicate"
    – Davy M
    Oct 20 '18 at 1:43
  • 5
    As for posting the same answer to multiple questions, see What (if any) action should be taken when the same answer appears on several questions? and, from MSE's FAQ: Is it acceptable to add a duplicate answer to several questions?
    – Davy M
    Oct 20 '18 at 1:46
  • 4
    I found the post I was thinking of, it was Yvette who brought it up, and Shog who implemented it: Shog's answer to: When is a comment hostile or unfriendly? (Educating newer users how to flag comments)
    – Davy M
    Oct 20 '18 at 1:48
  • 27
    Why on earth is this being downvoted? The error message describes a duplicate question. The post Chloe is trying to flag is an answer (an answer allegedly from a duplicate question, sure, but not a "mistaken duplicate suggestion"). Chloe is reporting this as a bug, and rightly so. How can anyone not see the obvious non-sequitur in the error message?
    – BoltClock Mod
    Oct 20 '18 at 3:26
  • 9
    @BoltClock idownvotedbecau.se/nofreehandcircles (jk)
    – Davy M
    Oct 20 '18 at 5:17
  • 12
    @BoltClock: Probably because the flag would actually have been wrong (even though, as it would not have been trivially wrong, it should undoubtedly have been let through and decided by a mod properly, rather than auto-blocked like the goofiness we see from askers.) Oct 20 '18 at 6:10
  • 8
    These error messages are complete nuisance. Just the other day I was unable to comment on a nuance of using the value of -1 in code, because -1 triggers the "Do not explain your downvotes" error.
    – GSerg
    Oct 22 '18 at 13:12
  • 1
    @GSerg The limitation is removed now.
    – user202729
    Oct 22 '18 at 13:15
  • @Chloe can you confirm that this is now fixed on main?
    – Samuel Liew Mod
    Oct 22 '18 at 23:37
  • 1
    It still gives the error "Don't flag mistaken duplicate suggestions; instead, edit the question: make the title specific and detailed, then explain why the answers to the other question do not solve this problem." @SamuelLiew
    – Chloe
    Oct 23 '18 at 18:36

Sorry about that. The purpose of this check is to discourage folks from flagging their questions for reopening; moderators generally are not inclined to reopen questions unless there's clear evidence supporting it, and if that's provided in the form of an edit then moderators don't even need to be involved.

But you're quite right, this is not terribly applicable to answers. Henceforth, the check will only fire now if "duplicate" isn't being followed by "answer".

Regex is: \bnot\s+(a\s+)?duplicate\b(?!answer)

  • Why not test the object to see if it is a question or answer instead? Using regular expressions are very flaky. What if someone said "This answer is not a duplicate."? What if they started the sentence with a capital "Not"? regexr.com/4689c
    – Chloe
    Jan 11 '19 at 15:18
  • Because currently I don't have the ability to differentiate between flags on questions and flags on answers, @Chloe. That might be worth adding at some point, but this is a fairly niche case; less than two dozen false-positives in the entire history of Stack Overflow. FWIW, the regex is run case-insensitive.
    – Shog9
    Jan 11 '19 at 16:19
  • Just ran into this issue here. While probably not a frequent occurrence, it would be nice for the popup to be informational, and not stop every attempt to flag the question Feb 7 '19 at 22:18

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