Quick reminder regarding duplicate topics

[Jeric 46,835]

I've seen an increase in content reported with a claim that there is already another thread on that subject. This increase means it is probably a good time to remind the community of one of our more popular policy changes. We updated the policy in 2015 to reduce the number of locked or merged threads since it was a huge annoyance for many of our userbase. Though there can be exceptions depending on the situation, staff should only be merging and locking new duplicate threads if there is an existing Mega-Thread or if the same topic is spammy ( basically if there two or more of the same or similar topic on the same page). 

Please don't report a topic for being a duplicate just because you created an old thread, or in the absence of spam or a Mega-Thread. 

Thanks all.