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I asked this question in April 2014. I received no response, until August 2015 when my question was suddenly marked a dupe of this one, asked in May 2015.

It is better phrased, and actually has answers, but this question marked as a dupe reflects negatively on my record, and I feel it is unfair because my question was not particularly bad, and I asked the question about a year in advance.

Do I have any claim here? Or is this the standard for marking dupes?

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    naw it's not negative. Happens to everyone.
    – Seth
    Oct 28, 2015 at 2:22
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    I've gotten a "Great Question" (gold) badge for a duplicate on SO. Duplicates can be very helpful, since they sometimes come out as better search results.
    – DonyorM
    Nov 2, 2015 at 14:21
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    To illustrate the point, I just voted to close this one as a duplicate. This doesn't make your question bad, wrong or any less useful.
    – terdon
    Nov 3, 2015 at 17:09

2 Answers 2

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Sorry, this is the norm.

We want the best answers for people - and good questions attract good answers.

So having a bad question redirect to a good one is much better than the other way round - and why edit the bad one to make it good when you have a good one?

It's pretty standard to do this as well.

As to the negatively on your record, I try not to see it like that (especially in this case). If you've looked to check it's not a dupe (which I guess it wasn't then) then you've done nothing wrong.

We remove duped questions, and make them atuo redirect. This means people searching with different terms are more likely to find the answers - essentially you have made a bigger net to catch the searchers.

My pronouns are He / Him

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Just the opposite: it reflects good on you: it means it's a worthy question that others will find through Google and then will be directed to the question that does have an answer.

And that also answers your question: yes, we try to dupe questions without answers to questions with answers!

So keep up the good work!

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