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I answered this question: What is most important when starting to play Clash of Clans?, and another person must have copied and pasted my answer into another answer box and posted it. Is this acceptable, and if not should I tell the offender so? Also, how should I react to this, do I flag or downvote or what?

EDIT: This comment has now been deleted

3 Answers 3

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Sometimes an exact copy of a previous upvoted answer is posted in order to gain some reputation quickly: As it looks great in the first-post review queue, it might net a few upvotes quickly. Sometimes this is part of a strategy to establish a spam-account, or one created for targeted upvoting.

Unless there are some additions or other improvements over the original, I'd suggest voting for deletion, or flagging such posts for the moderators to review with a short description that it is an exact duplicate of another answer.

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    This is a tactic increasingly used by spammers, or users trying to circumvent restrictions. Occasionally it is benign, some cultures don't see anything wrong with just copying stuff, after all the information is helpful - but yeah, mods need to know about this.
    – user43038
    Commented Oct 11, 2014 at 14:23
  • @TimPost Thanks, I've edited my post to better cover the case that it is meant to improve on the existing answer.
    – Murch
    Commented Oct 11, 2014 at 16:07
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This kind of behavior is unacceptable on StackExchange sites.

I highly recommend flagging it for moderator attention.

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Yes, it is acceptable — so long as attribution is made.

In the case you presented attribution was missing, so the post was deleted.

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    According to this meta, we delete duplicate answers. It was meant more for people paraphrashing and not adding anything new, but it still seems to apply for a straight copy paste, regardless of attribution.
    – Frank
    Commented Oct 11, 2014 at 13:20
  • @badp: You seem to be talking about a post that duplicates the information content, but in this case someone posted an exact copy of another answer on the same question.
    – Murch
    Commented Oct 11, 2014 at 16:08
  • @Murch Yes. You can copy paste answers, you are legally allowed to, so long as you abide by the content license. It is acceptable, but that doesn't mean the community will accept it.
    – badp Mod
    Commented Oct 11, 2014 at 16:09
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    @Frank the site is VERY inconsistent on this, as I've flagged things on several occasions based on this and had my flags rejected.
    – shanodin
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 19:34
  • @shanodin What flags are you using? NaA puts it into the Low Quality queue, where you don't see if it's a duplicate answer. You should be commenting on the fact that it adds nothing new to the existing answers, if you aren't already.
    – Frank
    Commented Oct 13, 2014 at 20:08
  • @Frank will bear that in mind in future. Think previously flagged with a custom reason that it was duplicating another answer/adding nothing, then when that was declined, gave up on the whole endeavour.
    – shanodin
    Commented Oct 14, 2014 at 5:22
  • Duplicates on the same question wouldn't be accepted by the community. Duplicates copy pasted to another question probably should get the question closed. Not that rep-[what's the PC term for rep-whores?] would do that, since it would hurt their own rep.
    – corsiKa
    Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 16:29
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    ALL ATTRIBUTION GOES TO BADP Yes, it is acceptable — so long as attribution is made. In the case you presented attribution was missing, so the post was deleted.
    – The Idiot Gamer
    Commented Oct 25, 2014 at 3:05

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