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I finished writing a question, and then realized it is a duplicate. Should I post?

I swear this happens all the time to me.

Reason not to post: it is a duplicate, and will waste peoples' time with the question (having been bumped to the top). Perhaps this can be mitigated by the OP immediately flagging it as a duplicate.

Reason to post: for the same reasons we don't delete well-posed duplicates; e.g. to improve the chances someone searching for this question will be able to find it.

(It would have been pretty ironic if I had found out this question was a duplicate before posting.)

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  • $\begingroup$ Duplicates should be deleted in the common case that they add nothing novel (if they add some text that helps searching then such text should be added to the dupe). Otherwise we end up with hundreds of dupes to common exercises - most being fgitw low-quality answers - making it impossible to search for the "best" answers. $\endgroup$
    – Bill Dubuque
    Commented Aug 25 at 17:16

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While good duplicates are often not deleted, that does not mean that you should be encouraged to post a duplicate question. Please don't do that. If the older question resolved you're query, yay! There is nothing more which needs to be done.

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