When flagging a duplicate, which question should be flagged as the original?

Question

I've run across questions a few times now that have been duplicated a few times over.

For example, lets say there are 3 questions:

1. The new question that I'd like to flag as a duplicate
2. An older question that asked a very similar/exact same question. This question is marked as a duplicate of question 3 below.
3. An even older question that asked a similar question and the answer still applies to question 1.

In this case, Which is the most appropriate question to use when flagging a duplicate? I'm inclined to use question 2, in which case other users can easily see the answers/comments in both question 2 and 3 (since 2 is already flagged as a duplicate of 3).

Is flagging a question as a duplicate of a question that is itself a duplicate acceptable, or should I always use the 'base' question?

Answer 1

When marking a question as duplicate, the Quality of Question and Answers is far more important, than the age of the Question.

Secondly, you should avoid chaining of duplicates. What I mean is that suppose Question X is marked as duplicate of Question Y. Now when you see a new Question A, which can be marked as a duplicate, it would be better to mark it as a duplicate of Y.

This has the advantage of making Y the canonical Post. That way future contributors can focus on improve the quality of one answer, rather than improving Both Question X & Question Y

Answer 2

I think if both questions have same quality, flag the newer one to be a duplicate of the older (this is the default action).

On the other hand, if a newer question has (much) more quality than the older one (i.e., there is no doubt about it), flag the oldest as the dupe.

Here are 2 posts from Meta Stack Exchange in line with above:

• Should I vote to close a duplicate question, even though it's much newer, and has more up to date answers?

• Which of 2 similar old questions close as duplicate?