What should I do if I want to ask a question which has already been asked but does not have satisfactory answers? How can I make the older question active again, or re-ask the question without it being marked duplicate?
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1$\begingroup$ You can actually ask the same question explaining explicitly why the answers to the possible dupe question didn't answer your queries. When you have sufficient rep, you can put bounty on the pre-existing question on necessary grounds. $\endgroup$– user36790Jul 21, 2016 at 4:03
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4$\begingroup$ In many cases @MAFIA36790 suggesting isn't a good idea. The point is that if you mis-phrased the original and people answered the question you didn't mean, then a rephrased question plus explanation of the difference is OK. If you asked the right question and just didn't like the answers, there is rather more risk of getting shut down. $\endgroup$– dmckee --- ex-moderator kittenJul 21, 2016 at 4:20
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3$\begingroup$ @dmckee : I think the OP is not saying that he made a mistake and wants to try posting the question again. I think he means that he diligently searched before asking, and found that the question already existed on PSE but he was not satisfied with the answers given. $\endgroup$– sammy gerbilJul 21, 2016 at 23:14
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$\begingroup$ Exactly you read my thoughts perfectly $\endgroup$– Tanmay KulkarniJul 22, 2016 at 3:22
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1 Answer
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If you can find a good edit to make to the question (or one of its answers), editing will bump the question to the top of the front page. This is an easy way to draw some attention to the question. However, make sure your edit actually improves the question (or answer). An edit that just changes something but doesn't make the post better is not appropriate. You may want to read our guidelines on editing to get a sense of what constitutes an appropriate edit.
As long as you have less than 2000 reputation, any edits you make will have to be reviewed by high-rep users before they get applied.
Another way to bring attention to a question is to join the chat room and ask about it. Maybe someone else there can answer it, or at least will be willing to help you promote it.
Probably the most effective way to bring attention to a question is to put a bounty on it, but you need to have at least 75 reputation for that. When you place a bounty, you give up your own reputation equal to the bounty amount, but in exchange the question gets featured on the front page for a week. At the end of that time, you can award the bounty to an answer which was posted during that time period, and the poster of that answer gets an amount of reputation equal to what you gave up.
You should not ask the same question again. It'll get closed as a duplicate, and possibly downvoted for insufficient research effort (because we expect people to do some searching before posting a question, and your search should have turned up the earlier version of the question if you didn't already know about it). Even if you don't like the answers on the preexisting question, that doesn't stop it from being a duplicate.
However, if you're asking something more than what the previous question asked, in the sense that a complete answer to the previous question would not answer what you're asking, then you can go ahead and post a new question. In this case you should link to the previous question and explain very clearly what you are adding to it.
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1$\begingroup$ But I don't have enough reputation to perform most of the actions you have suggested, can you suggest some ways that can help people with low reputation.. $\endgroup$ Jul 22, 2016 at 3:24
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1$\begingroup$ What I've given is pretty much a complete list. There is nothing else to suggest. Bringing attention to an old question is considered a privilege around here (like almost anything else you can do on the site), and you earn that privilege by contributing good questions and/or answers - in other words, by gaining reputation. $\endgroup$– David ZJul 22, 2016 at 8:03