this question is similar to this question except less pushy, and a bit broader in scope. Is asking these types of questions allowed, or should they be closed as duplicate (in general, not in this case as those questions are different)
asked Jul 6, 2021 at 11:16
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2 Answers
If the original question is unsalvageable (closed, heavily downvoted, perhaps even deleted) then this can be a good course of action.
Sometimes the original question might have a valid core-question, but due to severe issues with the way it is written it can not be saved without rephrasing it from scratch. This is especially the case when we are dealing with an uncooperative question author who opposes any edits to their question. I am not saying that this is a problem in this particular case. While the author does not make the impression that they are particularly open to criticism in the comments, nobody actually attempted any edits to the question yet. But we did encounter that problem in the past.
And when a user does the work of rewriting the entire question from scratch, then there is no reason why they shouldn't get the credit for that (in form of reputation and question ownership).
However, the situation can become problematic if the poster of the revised question misjudged the original question. Should it gets fixed and reopened, then we now have a duplicate. So it would be best if people would only do that with questions which were already deleted for low quality or where they are 99% sure that the question really has no hope to get reopened.
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1On Physics.SE, on multiple occasions we have had older questions closed as a duplicate of a newer question when the older question was poorly written, had received no answers, or had only received a small number of low quality answers. This also happens on StackOverflow. Commented Jul 6, 2021 at 15:21
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"While the author does not make the impression that they are particularly open to criticism in the comments" - As the author of the question in question. How did I make that impression? I was quite literally looking for an answer to why governments and media outlets have been using this flawed practice. I continued to ask what specifically was wrong with my question and nobody could quote anything I said. Nobody could even state what "political narrative" I was trying to push. That says a lot about the integrity of this website.– RstewCommented Jul 6, 2021 at 18:15
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1@Rstew In your comments, you attacked every person who criticized your question, in many cases by insinuating ulterior motives. This makes you look like someone who is trying to win an internet argument, not someone who is interested in improving the content they posted.– Philipp ModCommented Jul 9, 2021 at 8:29
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So now the only issue is the comments I left? Not the original question? Interesting.... About those comments, who did I attack? What did I say that you thought constituted an attack? Do you realise that you have the upper hand here? I'm literally offering you the opportunity to audit all my words to quote me anything you want that you think is an "attack". Shouldn't be that difficult, should it?– RstewCommented Jul 10, 2021 at 0:22
Disclosure: I wrote that second question.
On Politics SE I hestitate more than elsewhere to edit questions, especially if I do not support the political position implicit in the question. I would have to ask myself if I'm distorting the original intent too much, or not enough, and in all likelihood I wouldn't be really satisfied.
Here I did not just rewrite the question from scratch, I substantially changed it in the process. The new one is something I'm comfortable to associate with my name (or rather my initials, since I made the decision not to use my full name here). I would challenge the "similar but less pushy" characterization in the meta question -- if that were the case, I should have edited the original.
So to generalize from my specific experience and self-justification:
Having a question on a topic which was clearly loaded (and closed for that reason) should not prohibit other, more balanced questions on that topic on formal grounds.
