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I quite often see a question that is an obvious duplicate on SO (most commonly "how make, post to facebuk wall?!?"). If there is/are already comment(s) indicating that other users have flagged the question as a duplicate, should I still flag the question? I'm not sure exactly how this shows up for the mods, and I don't want to spam the flag queue.

On a side note, the word "flagging" is kind of hilarious.

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I don't see any reason not to. At the very least it shows a consensus. –  SomeKittens Jul 31 '12 at 12:59
Why would you be flagging instead of voting to close? –  Aaron Bertrand Jul 31 '12 at 14:55
@Aaron I'm only 58% of the way to that privilege. Give me another month ;) –  Dustin Jul 31 '12 at 14:59

2 Answers 2

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Generally speaking, if you already see close votes (as indicated by the comments that link to possible duplicates), it's probably OK to skip flagging.

The intended result of flagging as duplicate will send it to the 10k queue, where we will end up voting to close as dupe, anyway. But the existence of close votes already will do the same thing.

It doesn't hurt a lot to go ahead and flag it anyway, but since it's already "in the system", I think it's probably fine to pass up in that case. It just adds the possibility that a diamond mod will see it, as well.

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If you don't have the necessary reputation and you think it deserves it, "flag to close".

Choose flag -> "it doesn't belong here, or it is a duplicate" and then you choose the appropriate option.

If you have enough rep to vote to close, don't flag. You're just making the process slower. Just vote to close it. If you're really unsure, you might post a comment, but in any case, if the question was closed without a valid reason or if it gets fixed, you can still vote to reopen.

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If you have enough rep to vote to close, flagging as a duplicate will be converted to a close vote anyway. –  Bo Persson Jul 31 '12 at 17:19

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