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Over time, obviously more and more questions are asked on this site, and such, many people have the same questions, which are then considered duplicates, but eventually by way of law, eventually we will run out of questions to ask. Now obviously I do not see this happening anywhere in the foreseeable future, but what will happen once it does?

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  • 9
    Upvoted for sheer ludicrousness. Oct 24, 2016 at 14:44
  • 3
    Unity 8 will bring a bunch of new questions :=)
    – Rinzwind
    Oct 25, 2016 at 13:12
  • The title contradicts the subject. Is the question when it will happen, or what such an occurrence might cause ("what will happen once it does")?
    – nafg
    Nov 6, 2016 at 5:42

6 Answers 6

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When that happens I will unleash my 42 special questions that I have in store but only for very special occasions such as this one.

Each of this questions will trigger sleeper ubuntu agents in the community that will also have 42 more questions each, which will also trigger other deep sleep agents with 42 more questions and so on...

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    can you ask it now? i don't know a good other question to ask currently :)
    – Gewure
    Nov 6, 2016 at 18:25
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As long as Ubuntu keep evolving that won't happen. Because there will always be new features to ask questions about.

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    New features... and bugs.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Nov 6, 2016 at 23:00
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To quote an XKCD comic "Mission <censored> accomplished"

You end up with a searchable library of ubuntu questions that people can use.

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  • So basically new questions will just all be marked as dupes?
    – David
    Oct 24, 2016 at 15:00
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    Don't censor yourself! Include the comic too, like I did; meta.askubuntu.com/a/15090/158442
    – muru
    Oct 24, 2016 at 15:07
  • People will look for answers find em, and go away happy Oct 24, 2016 at 23:35
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I think this is omitting a crucial aspect - even if there are repeat questions, they often have different answers in 2016 than they had 2009.

Sure, a question like "how can I get colored ls output?" won't have a different answer for the next 50 years. But if you look at this answer about bluetooth connection of two computers I gave yesterday, it is evident that this answer is specific to a systemd distribution only. Any answer older than 2 years is simply not working anymore.

One problem I see is: Often, just a superficial boilerplate answer is posted. It might not even work anymore due to changes in the underlying system. I hope that we can weed out the answers which have outlived their usefulness. This is the reason why it is not a problem for me when the same questions get asked repeatedly. One solution could be distribution-specific chapters, but these tend to grow over years when new knowledge is added, and they are rare.

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As I think more about this question, I think about all the different pieces of software and drivers that come with new versions of Ubuntu, and therefore, we may not ever have a full list of questions, because as new drivers and new software comes out, and new versions of new programs come out old answers and questions may be outdated, as seen in this question, vs this older, outdated question.

Right now, there are probably not enough users

  1. Using Ubuntu, or even Linux to stay up to date with all the new kernels, upgrades, etc.
  2. Active users on AskUbuntu asking questions that haven't been asked before

This is probably in part due to the fact, that some problems are more common than others, however people will always find a new way to break an installation, or a clever trick to brick their drivers!

To sum up, maybe there will be a time when we have a full "chest" so-to-speak of completely answered questions, that users can simply scroll through to their content, but for now it does not seem feasible.

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  • so when this happens, would the old outdated ones be removed?
    – user595510
    Nov 7, 2016 at 11:38
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Your title seems to ask how long it will take to reach that point, but your description seems to ask what will happen if it does happen.

The answer to the second question is, "nothing."

As for "when," I can answer that after you tell me how to compute how many possible questions there are on a given subject.

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