<p>My feeling is that questions along the same lines are going to get answers along the same lines&mdash;better to encourage <em>distinctive</em> questions if we want the answers to have wider coverage. We try to do that by linking to duplicates &amp; near-duplicate questions &amp; asking what's not covered in the answers there.</p>

<p>I find it counter-productive when I answer a question only to discover later on that someone else has answered what's essentially the same question already (often rather better): I could have saved time by linking to the prior question, perhaps with an explanation of how it was related if that wasn't obvious, or, if I had anything worth adding, by writing a brief complementary answer or comment; or I could have been inspired by the other answer to write something I wouldn't have thought of by myself. I also find it anticlimactic when a search turns up half a dozen posts on a topic I'm interested in but the questions &amp; answers are all much the same.</p>
