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 StackExchange sites is via search engines. To redirect users to the correct question, StackExchange uses the policy of redirection as explained here: - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/125220/automatically-redirect-anonymous-user-from-unanswered-duplicate-question-to-corr 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 benefitting twice with the same answer. Hence the janitorial rule here applies - cleanup and move on to find similar stuff to tidy up.