When is a duplicate question not a duplicate?

Question

Awhile back someone asked this question about losing properties when copying files. User Diamond made a guess at what the issue was and his answer was accepted. I recently ran into what looked a similar issue and searched around for information about what properties would be lost. I didn't find anything on google but did see this other question. Reading the question and answer I saw that it didn't really answer my question. The accepted answer guessed at why the message was showing but had no information about what properties would actually be removed.

I had a couple of options at this point:

• I could edit the question trying to add more detail and asking for a more detailed answer in the hopes that it would be seen and answered. I considered it unlikely, that even if other superuser users saw the question, they would bother to answer given that it already had an accepted answer. Plus if someone gave a better answer I couldn't change the accepted answer since it wasn't my question the best I could do would be to add one upvote.
• I could edit the question and add a bounty. Same issues as the first option given that there was an accepted answer I think less people would try and add info. Also I don't have a ton of rep. I see the bounty system useful if you are a high rep person with tons of rep (of which I am not) or need an answer to a critical question. While I really wanted to know if I was losing anything important with the copy it wasn't critical.
• I could create a new question to solicit new and better answers. So I created a new question and did receive an answer that actually answered the question. With the utility linked in the case I confirmed that a Mac on my network had used the alternative streams feature of NTFS to store extra info which I was fine with losing in the copy.

Shortly afterwards my question was closed as a duplicate. I don't know if duplicates get deleted at some point but if they do it would be a shame as I feel my question actually has the better (and correct) answer. I understand the desire to keep duplicates out of the system but it seems like in my case it was the only way to get a better answer.

Are there other options for getting an better answer to an accepted question/answer? It seems to me that most SuperUser users focus on new questions and that asking new questions is the way to get quick answers.

Answer 1

In short, the system wants you to put up a bounty.

Let me clear one thing up though. The Accepted Answer check mark does not mean "This is the correct answer". It means "This is the answer that worked for the OP".

Thus, it doesn't matter that you can't change it when working with the question of someone else.

1. Editing (and, thus, improving) a question is always a good idea and should be the first thing you try. But, there's obviously no guarantee to get a satisfying answer (then again, you never get that).

2. You put up your 50 rep bounty to draw attention to the question and hopefully someone provides the answer you want. Usually, this procedure is sufficient.

3. If you don't want to invest the reputation, you might simply want to ask on Root Access and try to work out a solution. Then you can add what you've learned to the existing question/answer.

Besides that, yes, we do delete duplicates. But if there is value in a dupe, we also like to keep them around so people can find that duplicate (and then find the answer on the original). However, we can also merge questions. This will keep all answers and (depending on the merge direction) also changes what the accepted answer is.

If you feel like this would be beneficial in this case, you could flag either of the questions and suggest the merge.