Goal: 
To remove duplicate issues in an issue queue so that all discussion about an issue is on a single page.
Skills required: 
Detailed steps: 

Searching for duplicate issues

  1. Set up prerequisites: Log in from Common Prerequisites for Contributors.
  2. Choose an issue and read and understand it fully (see Find the issues for a project in the Background section).
  3. Search for duplicates of that issue. In another browser window or tab, navigate back to the project's issue queue. In the "Search for" text field, enter keywords relating to your original issue from step 1, and set all the other fields to "- Any -".
  4. Look through the results and see if any appear to be the same issue. If you think one is a duplicate of the original issue, click on the link for the title and read it to be sure.

Closed issue?

You may find an issue that appears to be a duplicate, but is already closed.

  1. If the other issue's status is "Fixed" or "Closed (fixed)", check when it was fixed and compare that date to the latest release of the project.
    • If it was fixed before the current release, the user should update to the current release and see if that resolves the issue.
    • If it was fixed after the latest release, the user should test the latest -dev build of the project.
    • If the issue still occurs in the latest -dev build, it may be a regression. In that case, keep the issue open, and add the previous issue to the "Related issues" field with a comment explaining that the issue was previously resolved but has recurred.
    • For Drupal core, if the issue is already fixed in the latest major version, the issue may need to be backported to the previous major version. For example, if an issue has already been resolved in Drupal 8, but still exists in Drupal 7, then the issue's version should be changed to "7.x-dev" instead of "8.0.x-dev", and reference the fixed issue in the "Related issues.
    • If the other issue's status is "Closed (duplicate)", find the issue that one was marked as a duplicate of, and then follow the steps below.

Which one is the duplicate?

Decide which issue to keep, and which issue to mark as duplicate. Keep the issue that is:

  1. more clear with a better issue summary, more recent activity, and/or more activity overall,
  2. higher priority (e.g. critical),
  3. already fixed, or
  4. older.

Closing the duplicate

On the issue you've decided to mark as a duplicate:

  1. Change the issue status to Closed (duplicate)

    Only local images are allowed.

  2. Link to the other issue in the Related Issues field

    Only local images are allowed.

  3. Add a comment explaining why it is a duplicate and linking the other issue.
    Note: References to issues in the form of [#1234] (or [#1234-2] for comments) turn into links automatically, with the title of the issue appended. The status of the issue is shown on hover.

On the issue you've decided to keep open:

  1. Add a brief comment to the open issue that links the duplicate issue.
  2. Update the issue's summary to include any relevant information from the duplicate issue.
  3. Add a statement to include people in the commit mention: the usernames of people who worked on the duplicate one.
  4. If the open issue's priority is lower than the duplicate's priority and it meets the issue priority definition, increase the priority to match.

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