Rejected petition More actively prevent duplicate epetitions

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A search on this site for "capital" brings back 30 results, of which 29 relate to capital punishment. This is without counting results when searching for "death penality". There are multiple non-overlapping petitions here (one against, one for, one asking for referendum, etc) however 29 is ridiculous.

These duplicates make browsing the site unpleasant (we want to see different ideas, not 29 the same) and also dilutes support for ideas. This site cannot run effectively if duplicates are not actively prevented. That would be a great shame. I think we can accept petitions taking longer to appear on the site, for the sake of removing duplicates.

P.S. this is not only in relation to the capital punishment issue. For example searching for "satire" brings up two petitions. If duplicates are not to be looked for so actively when they are first published, we need a robust system to "merge" petitions (contact those who signed, informing them they may wish to support the other petition).

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 4 August 2011
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