# What to do with duplicates of deleted questions?

There are 109 questions that are closed as duplicates of deleted posts. This SEDE query lists all such posts.

Can we do something about these posts? One question is on its way to be Roomba'd and some others may be Roomba'd by additional downvotes. But that still leaves nearly 100 questions of this kind.

I think if any of these questions are worth deleting, then they should be deleted. If not, then they should be reopened (in the best case) or closed for another relevant reason. Alternatively, the linked duplicate could be undeleted if it's worth undeleting, but I don't think that scenario is likely.

• Another scenario that occurs to me: merge the deleted Question with its closed-as-duplicate (or one of them), and repoint any remaining duplicates to that newly merged Question. The thought is that the now deleted Question should have an Answer with a positive vote. While that may not be much of a guarantee of quality content, it is something to look for. Jun 26, 2020 at 19:18
• @hardmath That sounds like a much neater way out, +1
– user279515
Jun 26, 2020 at 19:19
• Or find the better of the duplicates (if better than the deleted question), to make as the new dupe target. No reason to keep a poor representative of a dupe as the dupe target. "Better" meaning a question with more effort and/or more context. Jun 26, 2020 at 19:42
• @amWhy That is an excellent suggestion, I will try to do so. +1
– user279515
Jun 27, 2020 at 9:20

But the other two Questions, closed as duplicates of that multi-part problem, are not duplicates of each other. They are closely related. The first asks about the automorphism group of simple field extension $$K=\mathbb Q(\alpha \zeta)$$, where $$\alpha$$ is the real fifth root of $$2$$ and $$\zeta$$ is a (complex) fifth root of unity. The question is then posed as to how many automorphisms of $$K$$ there are (presumably meaning over the base field of $$\mathbb Q$$), and a correct but not upvoted Answer is given (there is only the identity automorphism over $$\mathbb Q$$).
The second Question closed-as-duplicate asks something of a follow on problem, building on the knowledge that $$K$$ has only the trivial automorphism over $$\mathbb Q$$: Can the identity on $$K$$ be extended to a non-identity automorphism of $$\mathbb C$$? Gerry Myerson gave a correct, upvoted, and Accepted Answer to this, along with a Comment that the user should really have linked these multiple Questions about $$K$$ together.