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Could I know the reason of deleting my answer for this question https://askubuntu.com/questions/433748/use-terminal-to-translate-some-text?

I know that there exist a similar question but that appears after I answered.. Moreover why you can't just merger the questions?! Why did you delete +4 upvoted answer?!

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From my part (since it was I who did this), you had answered the question already on the duplicate.

Since you effectively had recognised that the question was a duplicate and had correctly answered on the correct question, my role was simple - to play the janitor and thus cleanup by removing the answer.

There was no reason to merge here since you had already answered the question.


Most traffic to Stack Exchange sites is via search engines. To redirect users to the correct question, Stack Exchange uses the policy of redirection as explained here:

Now ordinarily I would normally leave questions and answers alone unless they start to receive high traffic (visits). In this case, you had answered the question on the duplicate - thus leaving two answers on separate questions would have been nonsensical - you potentially would be benefiting twice with the same answer.

Hence the janitorial rule here applies - cleanup and move on to find similar stuff to tidy up.

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  • I totally understand that but why I loose reputation?! couldn't you just make it duplicate without delete? As I see there are much duplicate answers and not deleted!! I just want to understand the criteria of choosing duplicates to be deleted.
    – Maythux
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:30
  • there you go - hope that explains stuff.
    – fossfreedom Mod
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:35
  • I understand that and thanks for your time. Sometimes there are unfairness
    – Maythux
    Mar 13, 2014 at 16:40

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