Good search is important to prevent duplicated questions. Duplicate question are annoying for someone who want to find an existing similar answer, so he/she can find the solution directly. Without the need to ask a new question. It is also annoying for the reader, and for the person who wants to answer the question.

But how to achieve that? I had a few times I could not find a similar problem myself, and in the reply was said it was a duplicate question. Reading the links they were right.

Similar questions do help a lot. A few times they prevent me to post my question. Improve search for duplicates by searching answers not questions is an improvement of searching, but not for this question.

My last question was Python readability regex It is about, as you might expect about readability of regex in Python. I search first on stackoverflow and later further on internet and found that in most languages this can be done with IgnorePatternWhitespace But for Python it is not there, so I asked the question. It seems for Python re.VERBOSE would do that job. The first person replied that first and a few minutes later marked as a duplicate question. That was correct. If search on re.VERBOSE . So if you know the answer, you can find the (duplicate) question. But I you do not know the answer, and that is why I asked in the first place, you can not (or at least I could not find) the question and answer.

I do not care about this specific question, on the specific comment, nor the marking as duplicate, nor votes or something else. I am for me (and for others as well) just looking for a way to use StackOverflow even more efficient. Suggestions?

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up vote 10 down vote accepted

You already helped Stack Overflow become more efficient.

You asked a duplicate question, but using a unique context, with unique keywords. Anyone else now searching for python and IgnorePatternWhiteSpace will find your question and is then guided to the canonical question on the subject.

We cannot possibly anticipate every keyword anyone is ever going to use when asking a question. As such, asking a duplicate question after having searched is fine.

Note that your post was not downvoted. No one told you off. People helped you, then linked you to the canonical question. And in that process, we created the sign post for anyone using the same terms to find the solution.

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