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This has happened to me a few times. I am looking at the review queue and see a question asked 2 hours ago, which I am certain I have seen a few days ago. I then open a new tab in my browser find the question I saw a few days ago. I then go back to the review and mark the question as a duplicate.

Then I am getting the error message "Questions cannot be duplicates of themselves". But the new question was asked 2 hours ago, and I am marking it as a duplicate of a month old question asked by a different user.

If I think this is a bug in the review process, would that be a correct conclusion?

I have seen this again. I was asked to review a question posted two hours ago by user2282900. I tried to mark it as a duplicate of a question posted three weeks ago by Mike Furlender. Again I was told Questions cannot be duplicates of themselves.

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    There isn't enough information here. Please link to the review and the question(s).
    – Michael Hampton Mod
    Commented Jun 1, 2014 at 23:03
  • @MichaelHampton I have added a link to the old question. The review doesn't show up in my review history (which makes sense because it wasn't possible for me to review it).
    – kasperd
    Commented Jun 1, 2014 at 23:14
  • What was the question asked two hours ago? I don't see any likely candidates.
    – Michael Hampton Mod
    Commented Jun 1, 2014 at 23:17
  • @MichaelHampton It showed up in the "First Posts" review queue. But I can't find the question anywhere else. I guess I'll have to take a screenshot if it happens again.
    – kasperd
    Commented Jun 1, 2014 at 23:25

1 Answer 1

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Well, yes, technically I suppose it could be considered a duplicate, since it was exactly the same question. Hence the message, "Questions cannot be duplicates of themselves."

You ran across a review audit, designed to test whether you are actually paying attention or just clicking blindly to get shiny badges. And, sometimes, in cases like this, test your patience...

Anyway, to make sure you're paying attention, review audits often obfuscate some small parts of a post, such as the person who posted it, the vote count, the time it was posted, etc. So, your zero-score post by user ###### actually was the 16-vote question by Mike Furlender that you tried to mark it as a duplicate of.

In the end, you were paying attention, and it seems you passed the review audit.

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