[Sidebar Moderator]

An excellent idea I have heard discussed numerous times over the years. John Robinson would have to speak to the feasibility.

Of course this would only work where the poster used the article title exactly. We have far too many that insist on using their own titles, which makes future searches useless.

[Nora]

What about an automatic search not of the Title field, which even with good intentions can "go bad," but an automatic search of the URL for the source.

That won't solve the "heard it on the radio" problem, but will fix the typo/alteration problem ...and heard it on the radio doesn't have a searchable title anyway, LOL.

[ken5050]

IMHO, it would still work..the idea is to discourage someone from starting a duplicate thread, or in the case of breaking news, just listing the event....i.e. "Bush News Conference starting now"...so if the search match up some/most of the words used, it would still discourage someone from doing it again

[Cruise Missile Diplomacy]

I realize I'm coming into this late, but I can't find a direct answer to NittanyLion's post #14:

Is it possible to close duplicate threads to new posts, with the final reply linking posters to the active thread? That might eliminate the confusion generated when posters are unable to locate the undeleted thread. Perhaps the duplicates could be deleted at a later time.

I appreciate all the thought and effort that goes into this forum but I believe our moderator's valuable time is being wasted by this pursuit. Although I agree that the prevention (pre-submittal searches) are the best solution, I find this "cure" (article pruning) is worse than the disease (duplicate articles). This relentless slashing is making the site less usable.