5 ms·

Yes but that only works if the questions are identical. Often however they are merely similar, but closed as duplicates nonetheless.

by zarzavat 10mo ago

zahlman 10mo ago
No, that is completely wrong. It is exactly because the questions are not identical that the system works. That is what allows for multiple versions of a popular, important question to catch attention from search engines, and send everyone to the same, correct place. Perhaps your objection is that, because the target question is not literally identical (for example, maybe a code sample has different variable names, or the setup has an irrelevant difference in the container type used for a collection, etc.) that the answers don't literally answer the new version of the question. That is completely missing the point. It's not a forum. The Q&A format is just the way that information is being presented. Fixing the issue in your, personal code is not, and never has been, the goal.
- gyan 10mo ago
  You are positing that only questions with cosmetic or extraneous differences are marked as duplicates. That's not the case. As a maintainer of a popular project who has engaged with thousands of Qs on SO related to that project, I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner. When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO.
  - zahlman 10mo ago
    > That's not the case. Yes, it is. I have been active on both the main and meta sites for many years. I have seen so many of these complaints and they overwhelmingly boil down to that. And I have gotten so unbelievably stressed out on so many occasions trying to explain to people why their trivial objections are missing the point of the site completely. > I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner. Please feel free to cite specific examples. I'll be happy to explain policy. > When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO. That is generally irrelevant.
    - gyan 10mo ago
      > Please feel free to cite specific examples. I'll be happy to explain policy. How do I search for Qs closed as duplicates with a certain tag?
      - zahlman 10mo ago
        "[tag] is:question duplicate:yes" But if you had a personal experience, it will be easier to look within your questions on your profile page.
        gyan 10mo ago
        > But if you had a personal experience, it will be easier to look within your questions on your profile page. I answer Qs on this topic, not post them. ---- Here's an example I found: https://superuser.com/questions/1929615/ https://superuser.com/questions/1929615/ (the canonical q is about extracting as mono, the closed q is about muting one channel)
        zahlman 10mo ago
        You appear to have linked the canonical, which has a few duplicates marked. All are asking about isolating one channel, as far as I can tell. This canonical is literally titled "ffmpeg: isolate one audio channel". One of them also asks about "downmixing" to mono after isolating the channel (which I guess means marking the audio format as mono so that that isolated channel will play on both speakers), but that is trivial. And you see the same basic techniques offered in the answers: to use `-map-channel` or the `pan` audio filter. The other one explicitly wants a panned result, i.e. still stereo but only on one side; the logic for this is clear from the explanation in the canonical answer. The point is to show the technique, not to meet individual exact needs. Stack Overflow doesn't need separate "how do I get the second line of a file?" and "how do I get the third line of a file?" questions.
        gyan 10mo ago
        The dupe is what I linked. The orig is https://superuser.com/questions/601972 https://superuser.com/questions/601972 The orig wants a mono output with one of the original channels as signal source. This involves downmixing i.e. rematrixing the audio. The dupe want to just mute one of the channels, not repan it. One can't apply map_channel to do what the dupe wants. One can use a couple of methods to achieve the dupe, including pan. But the syntax of pan needed for the dupe case is not the same as the orig, or deducible from it. They need to consult the docs (fortuitously, the dupe case is an illustrated example) or get a direct answer. The 'technique' shown in the orig is not intuitively adaptable to the dupe - one needs to know about the implicit muting that pan applies, which is not documented or evident in the orig answer. So it's not a duplicate of the source Q.

Yes but that only works if the questions are identical. Often however they are merely similar, but closed as duplicates nonetheless.

zahlman 10mo ago

No, that is completely wrong. It is exactly because the questions are not identical that the system works. That is what allows for multiple versions of a popular, important question to catch attention from search engines, and send everyone to the same, correct place. Perhaps your objection is that, because the target question is not literally identical (for example, maybe a code sample has different variable names, or the setup has an irrelevant difference in the container type used for a collection, etc.) that the answers don't literally answer the new version of the question. That is completely missing the point. It's not a forum. The Q&A format is just the way that information is being presented. Fixing the issue in your, personal code is not, and never has been, the goal.

gyan 10mo ago
You are positing that only questions with cosmetic or extraneous differences are marked as duplicates. That's not the case. As a maintainer of a popular project who has engaged with thousands of Qs on SO related to that project, I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner. When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO.
- zahlman 10mo ago
  > That's not the case. Yes, it is. I have been active on both the main and meta sites for many years. I have seen so many of these complaints and they overwhelmingly boil down to that. And I have gotten so unbelievably stressed out on so many occasions trying to explain to people why their trivial objections are missing the point of the site completely. > I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner. Please feel free to cite specific examples. I'll be happy to explain policy. > When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO. That is generally irrelevant.
  - gyan 10mo ago
    > Please feel free to cite specific examples. I'll be happy to explain policy. How do I search for Qs closed as duplicates with a certain tag?
    - zahlman 10mo ago
      "[tag] is:question duplicate:yes" But if you had a personal experience, it will be easier to look within your questions on your profile page.
      - gyan 10mo ago
        > But if you had a personal experience, it will be easier to look within your questions on your profile page. I answer Qs on this topic, not post them. ---- Here's an example I found: https://superuser.com/questions/1929615/ https://superuser.com/questions/1929615/ (the canonical q is about extracting as mono, the closed q is about muting one channel)
        zahlman 10mo ago
        You appear to have linked the canonical, which has a few duplicates marked. All are asking about isolating one channel, as far as I can tell. This canonical is literally titled "ffmpeg: isolate one audio channel". One of them also asks about "downmixing" to mono after isolating the channel (which I guess means marking the audio format as mono so that that isolated channel will play on both speakers), but that is trivial. And you see the same basic techniques offered in the answers: to use `-map-channel` or the `pan` audio filter. The other one explicitly wants a panned result, i.e. still stereo but only on one side; the logic for this is clear from the explanation in the canonical answer. The point is to show the technique, not to meet individual exact needs. Stack Overflow doesn't need separate "how do I get the second line of a file?" and "how do I get the third line of a file?" questions.
        gyan 10mo ago
        The dupe is what I linked. The orig is https://superuser.com/questions/601972 https://superuser.com/questions/601972 The orig wants a mono output with one of the original channels as signal source. This involves downmixing i.e. rematrixing the audio. The dupe want to just mute one of the channels, not repan it. One can't apply map_channel to do what the dupe wants. One can use a couple of methods to achieve the dupe, including pan. But the syntax of pan needed for the dupe case is not the same as the orig, or deducible from it. They need to consult the docs (fortuitously, the dupe case is an illustrated example) or get a direct answer. The 'technique' shown in the orig is not intuitively adaptable to the dupe - one needs to know about the implicit muting that pan applies, which is not documented or evident in the orig answer. So it's not a duplicate of the source Q.