> and merged it .... which is what I would expect a moderator to do in trying to resolve duplicate questions.
Brent:
This is not one of mine, but as with my actions you need to bear in mind the situation of the Moderator before making such definitive statements.
If faced with duplicate questions, it only makes sense to merge the two (or more!) threads if there are different answers in both threads. Otherwise it is more confusing to readers as they wonder why the same question is asked twice.
Even then as Merging takes considerably longer than deleting a duplicate, it is often a question of just how much time a Moderator has available when he spots the duplicates. Certainly if I have time I do merge them (if there are only two - if there are more than two posts of the same thing I am much more likely to delete all extra ones) but if I am for instance just at the start of my first pass for the day (which is likely to take - Tue-Fri - a couple of hours), I am likely to not spend the time on merging them in order that I can get on with the rest of the new posts.
I had one question this morning in fact posted to three forums where I spent a lot of time merging all three. That was however because I had checked and this was a person new to the forums who had in total posted only those three posts and so needed educating on the correct behaviour. If someone has already posted over 100 forum posts (say) they ought to be aware of forum etiquete and not post to more than one forum.
Mike Walsh
FAQ sites: (SP 2010)
http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com; (v3)
http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com and (WSS 2.0)
http://wssv2faq.mindsharp.com Complete Book Lists (incl. foreign language) on each site.
