Often, when I'm about to give an answer to a question, other users post the same thing right before me, rendering my work useless. This is kind of frustrating. 

I would love to see a flag that indicates if another user is about to give an answer. When I see that it is a user with high reputation I wouldn't have to start on researching or writing something down.

An example: often questions to a specific topics are answered by the same 2-3 users at a specific time of day. I know these users/their names and if I see that they are the ones answering it, I can be sure that this answer will be of high quality. So that would be a good reason to save time and concentrate on other questions.

Specifically:

* the flag shouldn't be permanent, maybe visible for 5 minutes
* the flag shouldn't be set automatically, users may choose to set it and maybe should only be able to set it once, so you can't "block" a question
* only seeing that a question is flagged doesn't mean that there is no reason to answer it
* other users should be able to see who flagged the question
* additionally there could be a short hint where that answer is headed (e.g. *"wrong use of objects"*), so you would know if your answer will be a duplicate or not