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Inspired by a similar question on meta.stackoverflow, I just did this database query on serverfault, and found 262 pairs of questions with totally identical title, excluding those where one of them is already closed. (There are some merged questions in the list, if those were not closed before merging.)

  • In some cases these might be simple duplicates, then vote to close. (If you think the to-be-closed one has valuable answers, you might flag it for moderator attention, so it can be merged.)
  • In other cases one or both questions might have a bad title, then edit the title (and maybe the text and tags, if you are on it) to make them better (and distinct).

Happy editing/voting!

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  • Looks like it doesn't exclude merged questions (ie this/this). Great query though, thanks!
    – Shane Madden
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 18:08
  • By the way, on my similar superuser question nhinkle added some guidelines for flagging. Being a total foreigner to Serverfault, I'll let this for the SF crowd to guess how to handle it here.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 18:10
  • @Shane: I found no way to exclude merged questions, only closed ones. I thought closing would be a prerequisite for merging, but it seems not to be so.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 18:12
  • Looks like a goldmine for getting the Marshall badge ;)
    – Dana the Sane
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 18:51
  • @Dana: Please don't flood the moderator's flag queue, the moderators might not like too many such flags. This is firstly meant for users who can already vote to close.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 18:56
  • May be better to start a queue of specific questions to vote on then. A duplicate question is a duplicate question though.
    – Dana the Sane
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 19:04
  • @Dana: There is this Vote to close chat room. But wait on your moderators to say whether you should or should not flag.
    – Paŭlo Ebermann
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 19:12
  • 2
    I would suggest that using the vote to close option is the most constructive, but if you feel they need a mod to close, or that they need merging please do flag them.
    – Sam Cogan Mod
    Commented Aug 31, 2011 at 20:40

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