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Do moderators have the privilege to move answers of questions, that are closed because they are duplicate of some other question on the same topic, under the original question? If yes, can they do so without losing votes or comments?

E.g., Can the mods move this answer to What will happen if I break a vow to God [duplicate] over to:

What to do when a vow is broken?

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    No, we have the ability to convert an answer to a comment or an answer to an edit, we have the ability to move comments to chat and move chats between chatrooms, but I don't think we have the ability to move an answer to another question.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Mar 18, 2016 at 17:01
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    It looks like there is a way to do it - it's called merging questions. It transfers all the answers on the duplicate question to the original. I'm not sure what it preserves or loses.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Mar 18, 2016 at 17:09
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    I tried it out, and it does prefer the comments at least. I'm not sure whether it preserves votes, but anyway if it doesn't preserve votes I guess that arguably makes sense - the moved question might potentially not address the original question as well as it does the question it was attached to previously, so quality of an answer for one question need not line up with quality of the answer on another question.
    – Keshav Srinivasan Mod
    Mar 18, 2016 at 17:13
  • @KeshavSrinivasan Good to know there's an option like that. I could have tried voting it up before you merged. But I think there are many questions like that need to be merged.
    – Say No To Censorship
    Mar 18, 2016 at 17:46
  • Seems like its completely clear now.
    – Ankit Sharma
    Mar 19, 2016 at 6:16
  • @AnkitSharma May need to create a single post to identify and merge answers of all duplicate questions?
    – Say No To Censorship
    Mar 19, 2016 at 17:48
  • @sv. doesn't sound good to me, a single mod flag can work on them.
    – Ankit Sharma
    Mar 19, 2016 at 17:59

1 Answer 1

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There is a feature called "merging" the questions can be done by moderators only.

When a question (say A) is exact duplicate of the question (say B) which has better wordings and the A has a good and useful answer(s), then moderator can merge A to B.

When A is merged to B, all the answers to A are moved to B (preserving votes and comments) so that better question B can has a useful answer(s). A is locked from further editing, answering, commenting and voting.

Note that it is very difficult to undo a merge operation.

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