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I just noticed that this answer is a nearly verbatim copy of my answer to the duplicate question here (I answered before I marked the question as a dupe: I'm not sure what happened, but I might have answered before I found the dupe).

This seems to have been done in good faith (it links to my question), and I can imagine it was copied with the intent of giving it greater visibility to people who got to the first question, but it seems wrong somehow (this meta question suggests it is, anyway).

What's the appropriate way to proceed here? Flag for deletion?

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    $\begingroup$ To link directly to an answer, one easy way is to click the "share" link and paste that. Note that referring to an answer by the order it appears on your page doesn't help people who aren't using the same sort order. (See the "active / oldest / votes" tabs to the right at the top of the set of answers), and even if they are using your sort order, for tabs other than oldest the order can change over time $\endgroup$
    – Glen_b
    Aug 18, 2017 at 2:44
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    $\begingroup$ Have a look at what I did here: stats.stackexchange.com/questions/239360/…. I copied my own answer to a very similar question. Then I explained why I copied it and gave a link and went into more detail. In my opinion this was a good procedure. $\endgroup$
    – Ferdi
    Aug 18, 2017 at 7:54

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(Speaking in general terms rather than to the specifics.)

If someone copies part of an answer but correctly references it (credits the original author) and quotes the part they took (typically using a blockquote), that's usually fine unless that's essentially the entire answer.

There's several things to do if someone copies a whole answer:

  1. dealing with the copied answer

    • attempt to guide the poster (e.g. comment to let them know that this is not a suitable thing to do, and explain how to quote and reference what they need, or to flag as duplicate if the question is a duplicate), and

    • either edit to quote and credit (where suitable), or

    • vote to delete or flag to delete or flag to convert to a comment (e.g. if the copied answer is only somewhat relevant rather than a real answer)

  2. a copied answer typically indicates a duplicated question; if that's the case

    • flag as duplicate, vote to close as duplicate, or mark as duplicate if you have a relevant gold tag badge if this is the case

    • if the question is essentially an exact duplicate and has very good answers that would therefore answer the original that it's a duplicate of, you may want to ask for a merge; flagging to close as a duplicate (etc) as above is still the first thing to do.

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    $\begingroup$ The answer is indeed completely copied; identical except for the beginning "As mentioned by Ben Bolker <link to my answer>". And the question is already marked as a duplicate. $\endgroup$
    – Ben Bolker
    Aug 18, 2017 at 3:17
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    $\begingroup$ WIth regard to that - at this point you could (1) post a link to here in comments under the answer and (2) vote to delete or flag (Thanks for the edit btw.) $\endgroup$
    – Glen_b
    Aug 18, 2017 at 3:34
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    $\begingroup$ @BenBolker, you marked the thread w/ your answer as the duplicate. At this point, I would delete your answer & repost it on the master thread. $\endgroup$
    – gung - Reinstate Monica
    Aug 18, 2017 at 12:20
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    $\begingroup$ OK ............ $\endgroup$
    – Ben Bolker
    Aug 18, 2017 at 12:20

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