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I know that it says "its answers may be merged with another identical question" for duplicate questions, but I have never seen it actually done.

Is there a chance that this could happen for my answer to this question? (based on this comment:

@soandos Honestly I think your answer is better than the top answer on moores law and would fit perfectly on that question. Quote from other answer: "That said, CPU MHz isn't computer speed, just like horsepower isn't speed for a car. There are a lot of ways to make things faster without a faster top MHz number." You just happen to break it down here... – Kyle )

In general though, does this ever happen? I have seen a lot of duplicate questions closed, but I have never seen answers migrated.

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    You mean migrate the answers. Merge is only available to us mods when a user for whatever reason posts two identical posts. Its never used on duplicates (AFAIK) because you won't see the old version anymore. I do agree that our system of handling dupes is clunky, but I don't expect that to change any time soon.
    – Ivo Flipse Mod
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 0:50
  • Yes, that is what I mean (edited to reflect that).
    – soandos
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 0:52
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    @IvoFlipse on the contrary, it can (and sometimes is) done to questions which are 99% identical but not asked by the same person. Check the mod menu - it even says that. However, it's not commonly done, and you must merge the full post - you can't merge just one answer. I can take a look at this one later.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 1:22
  • I don't follow. You mean all answers get merged into one question, or something else?
    – soandos
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 1:24
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    When you merge two questions, all answers and comments from the closed question get moved over to the unclosed question.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 1:25
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    Got it. Why is this so rarely done?
    – soandos
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 1:26
  • In most cases, the duplicate already has plenty of good answers, or is not quite an exact duplicate, so the migrated answers wouldn't quite make sense. For some examples of merged questions, a quick google search for site:superuser.com merged by reveals some results.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 1:28
  • In this case, I think merging might be appropriate. Unfortunately, I'm on my way out the door, so somebody else will have to do that or you'll have to wait a bit.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 1:29
  • @Ivo I don't think what you said is correct -- merging leaves both questions but just moves the answers, per blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/06/improved-question-merging
    – Jeff Atwood
    Commented Aug 19, 2011 at 2:15

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Question merging happens all the time. You usually don't see it because you're not a party to the posts getting mixed into the pool together or the question is out sight and out of mind.

Duplicates are merged when the answers and the question pretty much say the same thing with nothing new to add. If there is something new, it may be merged anyway.

Personally, if the two merge candidate questions have a combined answer count that will mean pagination occurs when they meld, it's either time for a prune or they're left standing alongside each other.

Merging helps people not have to jump all over the place to find the answers since they'll now be under the same question.

The stubs, which lead you to the master question, are rarely deleted. When they are it's because they're exact same word and phrase duplicates and serve no purpose sticking around whatsoever.

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