Duplicate posts

**Sean Thomas** · 03-23-2013, 01:20 PM

Question for the moderators,
I have noticed the odd comment about duplicate posts on certain threads.
What is the best way to check for duplicates before responding?
I have never found the search facility that usefull.

**Richard Buttrey** · 03-23-2013, 02:01 PM

Hello Sean,

The comments you see re duplicate posts are primarily aimed at any single individual who raises the same question in two or more threads, usually within a short period of each other, or indeed the same question on different and competing forums.

They are not aimed at someone else asking the same question. This happens a lot and with the best will in the world I accept that the search function is less than perfect so similar questions, but from different individuals are bound to happen.

**Sean Thomas** · 03-23-2013, 02:23 PM

Thanks Richard,
the reason i ask was i once got a warning for replying to a question as it was also on another site, unknown to me.
as you will appreciate i spend more time on this site than my wife would like, without spending more time checking out other sites first.
Just trying to get my head around the rules before i break any!

**Richard Buttrey** · 03-23-2013, 02:40 PM

Hi,

That sounds a little harsh. This forum doesn't stop the same person posting the same question to a different forum, but in the nature of these forums the etiquette is that you should always indicate that you've done that.

Where that hasn't happened it's likely that a moderator will spot it and post a message to that effect and ask the poster to edit their post accordingly. In this forum, when a moderator requests a certain action, other posters are not meant to reply until that corrections has taken place.

It's possible I suppose that in the case you cite the moderator who gave you a warning (whilst no doubt moderating on both) may have mixed up the two forums and thought your reply was on the forum where they had warned the original poster (if you're still following me

. Hell, this is harder than writing macro code.....

**Sean Thomas** · 03-23-2013, 02:57 PM

enough said!
lets get on with the code!
cheers

**FDibbins** · 03-23-2013, 03:35 PM

Another reason for "DUPLICATE POST" arearing on a thread could be thatthe server hiccupped, and a poster's post appeared twice (that's been happening a lot lately). What I do in a case likethat, is delete my "2nd" post, and replace it with a comment such as...deleted (my) duplicate post