What happens if my question is marked as a duplicate? Does this mean i'm in trouble? Will people still post answers to my question?
by 
Patrick
ANSWERS: 3
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When your question is marked as a duplicate, all the answers to "your" question are combined into the duplicate, and you lose all the points for the question. People can still post answers, but they would now see the original question that yours got combined into, and not "your" question. It's not a big deal unless you do it repeatedly. I think there are very few users here that have not inadvertently "duplicated" a question.
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1) You are not in trouble. People won't post any more answers to your question because it will be integrated in the original question (that one could get answered, though). So you won't get any more points for it. 2) If you are posting duplicates of well known questions, or duplicates of questions for which already a lot of duplicates have been posted, it could annoy some long time users and they could not just flag your question, but also rate it down. 3) If many of your questions are rejected as duplicates you could get some problems. I suggest that you always use first the default "Search for Answers" setting, which gives you a long list of similar questions, to avoid posting duplicates (and to get your answers more quickly).
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One additional thing to add to iwnit and Wide Awake Phoenix's answers: When your question is combined with an earlier question, all the answers originally posted in response to YOUR question will have a link included with them that says "Answer originally posted in response to....". This is probably done for two reasons, that I can think of: 1. It is a way of acknowledging you as the person who elicited those particular answers. 2. A question doesn't have to be an EXACT duplicate (word for word) of another question for it to be considered a duplicate. Therefore, providing a link to the original question and the way it's worded will help people understand the context by which these answers were originally posted for.
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