Based on some of my recent feature-requests and bug reports being closed as duplicates, helpful discussions with the community and reading through Why can a feature request or bug report without an answer be used as a duplicate target? and What posts should be escalated to staff using [status-review], and how do I escalate them? I would like to find out what is the best way to deal with my closed posts, and how to improve for next time this happens.
The situation I have found myself in is, despite searching better, I posted some feature requests and bug reports that had been posted before. I think (at least until I found, or was shown, the older posts) that my questions more or less fit with the criteria for new questions, as per the latest guidance:
- Is the question a feature request that looks like it has community support?
- Is it a bug report that others have been able to reproduce?
- Is the question only fully answerable by an employee?
However I find myself in the position where after searching and posting my question, I find there is an older candidate for review that is either unreviewed or not officially answered (no status-review tag and/or no staff answer) or that the 'review' is now out of date (i.e. I believe either things have changed or the previous review didn't have all the facts).
Example: This bug report: The close-vote retraction dialog doesn't tell you about the 14 day cool down where both my and the older post make the mistake of thinking retracted votes age off, but that is not the case. One of these should have an answer from a staff member, or a review tag added to imply that this assumption is wrong. I could add details to my post, but it is heavily downvoted and closed. I could instead edit the other post, which I don't have full agency over (I'd be putting words in that posters mouth).
Clearly had I seen it before I wouldn't be in this position. In general what should be done in these cases?
Example: Remind low rep askers who post "thanks" on answers they can accept an answer [duplicate] (deleted).
If I recall correctly, the way I found out about the linked post (When OP posts a comment saying "thank you" remind them to accept an answer) was that my question was closed as a duplicate of it, and then downvoted into the autodelete zone. I flagged the older post for review immediately and also started a bounty (I believe based on the advice given at the time? I honestly don't remember). However I didn't provide an new information in my post or on the old post, which the guidance suggests doing:
Old requests that have previously been declined can be reposted as new requests if you have something you can point to as a switch in the platform or culture that would render the previous reasons for declining obsolete.
Now the older post has 'status-reviewed' on it.
I believe I have new evidence to supply for this feature request, and I'm trying to decide whether to get my old request undeleted and then reopened or to make a whole new post. Had I been able to articulate this sooner I'd only be asking if it should be reopened.
However, if this happens again, what is the right course of action for my duplicate post? Especially if I think the topic needs revisting. Re-open or re-post?
Example: This would have been true for Allow ORing between more search terms like `inquestion:123`, or at least tell me the search failed had it stayed closed as a duplicate. Now, I'm not sure what convinced others to re-open it but was this the correct action? It's not an exact duplicate of the one initially suggested, and the other suggestion from Rob in the comments (now deleted, but still in the linked questions section) was just a suppot post.
Should my post have remained closed, and the original updated and reviewed?
I'd really like feedback, not only so I know what to do with these posts now, but also so I know what to if/when it happens again.
