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There is a question on our front page, https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8408/prerequisites-for-pmp-exam, which to me seems to cover exactly the same ground as an earlier question. I posted a link to the possible duplicate and asked the asker to update his question if the material in the other post doesn't answer the question.

The close reason for "exact duplicate" says the following:

exact duplicate

This question covers exactly the same content as earlier questions on this topic; its answers may be merged with another identical question.

Now, my thought is that this post should be closed and existing answers merged with Can I apply for PMP without experiences in all processes? What are the requirements for obtaining these certifications?

However, there aren't any close votes on the post, and we have 71 users on our site, at 500 rep and above, who have the ability to help moderate the site and keep our site clean and free of duplicates.

So, I thought I'd ask, why should this post remain open? Is there some way we can edit it so that it isn't covering the same material as earlier posts, assuming the asker doesn't come back and make edits?

As an aside, if you come across two posts where you think the answers should be merged, please bring this up on meta and tag with .

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Both Questions are Off-Topic

Both questions seem off-topic in various ways. In particular, both questions can be interpreted as career advice in the vein of how to qualify for a given exam---or worse yet, which certification to pursue.

Perhaps more egregiously, https://pm.stackexchange.com/questions/8408/prerequisites-for-pmp-exam is really a "LMGTFY" question. It is a question that could be answered best by reading the PMI requirements for the certification, or asking clarifying questions of the certifying body rather than polling for opinions on the Internet.

Raise the Issue When Needed

Not everyone who visits the site reads every question, especially on topics that don't intrinsically interest them. If you want more participation from the community on questionable questions, downvote or vote-to-close so that it shows up in the review queue as something worth looking into more closely.

I'm not sure if diamond moderators can vote-to-close without unilaterally closing a question. If you can, that might garner more community involvement because it shows that someone is calling for a vote. If you can't vote-to-close as a diamond moderator, downvoting at least pushes it to the top of the "activity" tab of the questions page in a way that people with close-vote privileges are more likely to notice.

Push to the Review Moderator-Tools Queues

Again, I'm thoroughly ignorant of the magical powers granted to diamond moderators. However, taking some action that pushes questionable questions to the Close Votes or Low Quality Posts review queues will certainly draw attention from people with the correct privileges. In addition, users with access to Moderator Tools will have vote privileges on certain types of flagged questions, so that may be an option, too.

Closing Thoughts

I applaud your desire to see more community involvement in closing duplicate and off-topic questions. In my opinion, we just need to leverage the existing Stack Exchange mechanics to make that happen.

Updated Information Extracted from Comments and Discussions

@jmort253 correctly points out some additional information, which I'm pulling up into the answer for posterity.

  1. Diamond moderators cannot vote-to-close or flag questions without taking direct, unilateral action on a question. However, others with elevated privileges can do so, and are encouraged to use those mechanics when appropriate.
  2. Diamond moderators can use upvotes and downvotes just like everyone else, which is a great way for them to communicate to non-moderators with voting privileges.
  3. Editing and answering questions (including retagging) pushes them to the top of the "activity" tab of the questions page, but doesn't seem to impact the position on the "newest" tab.
  4. Voting doesn't seem to directly correlate to ordinal position on the question tabs, but sufficient downvotes may push questionable questions into the review queues. (NB: This might be a worthy topic to research or ask about on Meta Stack Overflow).

Thanks to @jmort23 for the clarifications.

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  • That's the challenge a moderator has. I can only close or delete, which is why we really encourage the crowd-sourcing nature of community involvement. You can read more about diamond moderators in A Theory of Moderation. Good point on pushing to the review queue. I think a downvote would surely do that, and moderators can up/down vote posts as normal.
    – jmort253
    Jan 13, 2013 at 1:00
  • You might make one correction: Editing and answering push a question to the top of the questions page, but up/down voting and voting to close/reopen may only push it into the review queue.
    – jmort253
    Jan 13, 2013 at 1:03
  • @jmort253 I'm pretty sure that any activity on a question raises it (although I'm more than willing to be proved wrong), and on a low-volume site like this it should generally push it to the front page--at least, the front page of the "active" tab.
    – Todd A. Jacobs Mod
    Jan 13, 2013 at 1:09
  • Nope. Only changes to the actual Q&A, like posting or editing (well, and retagging) will push a post to the top of "active". You can try it out by searching for some obscure, old post you've never voted on and vote up (or down) some of the answers or questions. Then wait a minute (to be sure the cron job has time to run) then take a look at the "active" tab. :)
    – jmort253
    Jan 13, 2013 at 1:14
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    @jmort253 Thanks for the clarifications. I've gone ahead and pulled them up into the answer, to improve the accuracy of the answer and to preserve the information for posterity in the event that the comment thread gets cleaned up at some point. The additional information is appreciated!
    – Todd A. Jacobs Mod
    Jan 13, 2013 at 16:39

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