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Duplicates used to be handled by the system putting some markup in the question body, like so:

> **Possible Duplicate:**  
> [Title of the Duplicate Question](http://superuser.com/) 

<!-- End of Automatically Inserted Text -->

Obviously this is handled differently now, but a lot of these questions still remain.

Is it possible to convert them to the new way of doing things? Will removing the body text auto-update the duplication and put the newer, correct box in? Or is there another way to kick-start this process?

Side note: One thing I discovered when editing as part of the Manufacturer cleanup is that people with < 2k rep (like me!) cannot simply suggest an edit to change/remove a tag on duplicate questions, which isn't fun, as sometimes there really is nothing else wrong with the question.

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  • You add an HTML comment to the post to bypass the 6-character restriction, and put in the edit summary to have reviewers "Improve" it and remove the comment. Or, you flag for moderator attention explaining the situation, linking to the appropriate approved tag cleanup request.
    – gparyani
    Nov 11, 2014 at 17:21
  • Also, doing what you want will need a mod to reopen the question, edit out the text, and then reclose the question. These older questions have a different close reason internally on them ("exact duplicate" vs. "duplicate) and this will remove the older close reason and replace it with the new one.
    – gparyani
    Nov 11, 2014 at 17:23
  • @damryfbfnetsi - On your first point - it's possible to review in full rendered format (not just raw markdown), so any 'improve and remove' comment added to the body could be missed, and subsequently approved - I'd rather not litter the body of questions with useless comments :). Point 2: That's one way of doing it, and certainly mods could do this on a case by case basis, but I was hoping for a more automated approach, like say a 10k'er review tool to re-review old duplicates, with options for 'one-click convert' them to the new dupe format
    – Robotnik
    Nov 11, 2014 at 23:20

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