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0 pointsJoker_vD2y ago0 comments

Repetition is harmful. I've seen it play out on many expert forums (including an M:tG forum with several Level 2 Judges): sooner or later, depending on the person's stress-resistance, but always, they get too tired of answering the same questions over and over and over and over again. And manifestations of that phenomenon aren't pretty: they either leave the forum entirely, or turn quite acidic in their tone. In either case, their usefulness as the anwererers becomes quite low.

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2 comments · 2 top-level

Thrymr2y ago

Repetition is harmful, stale answers are harmful, growing the results forever is harmful, searching for good old answers that are still valid is difficult, prioritizing newer answers means that the good old ones are harder to find, etc., etc., etc. Every forum, wiki, and growing documentation base eventually stagnates, overflows, or dies some other way. Wikipedia is one exception that mostly stays up-to-date.

jjk1662y ago

What if people just don't answer the same questions over and over? Old answers can be linked, but the whole point of allowing repetition is to get fresh answers, ideally from new people. People going insane repeating themselves is a separate issue that can be solved in much better ways than prohibiting duplicate questions.

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