The duplicate might be absolutely outdated. This means that either technology has changed, software is no longer updated, new features have been added, etc.
You can't really fix a duplicate. If the above is true, it is very hard to "fix" such a state. As the duplicate is linked to quite often, it will probably have accumulated a large number of votes and views. At the same time, its answers might not reflect the current state of the art anymore (for reasons given above).
In order to fix something like this, you'd have to go through the whole question/answer pair and see if you can salvage it. Even worse, you might even want to close the duplicate as "not constructive" or "off topic", or "too localized", if it happens to fall under any of these categories. You would then end up in a state where the "new" question is locked (in some sense), and the old one too.
In order to fix something like this, you'd have to go through the whole question/answer pair and see if you can salvage it. Even worse, you might even want to close the duplicate as "not constructive" or "off topic", or "too localized", if it happens to fall under any of these categories. You would then end up in a state where the "new" question is locked (in some sense), and the old one too.
You can't really add new information. Well, you certainly can. But if you post a great answer to a question that's a year old – or if you've finally found the solution to a big problem –, you'll start off with a score of 0, among many other low-quality answers like "I kinda had the same problem, and fixed it by …", or "This is a great solution:
<insert link here>
".How are you ever going to make it to the top again? You won't have the ability to gather all these votes that would allow you to outscore the other answers.
By closing the new question, you stop the process of getting new information. After a question's been closed as a duplicate, you eliminate the possibility for users to add new information to an old problem. This is not to say that they couldn't just post at the duplicate, but for the reasons in my previous points, this is not always useful.
Also, from my experience, I haven't really often seen users posting their answers at the duplicate, even when they are able to see the "possible duplicate of … " link.
Also, from my experience, I haven't really often seen users posting their answers at the duplicate, even when they are able to see the "possible duplicate of … " link.