Bitcoin Forum

Today when I surf the Beginners board, I see two threads with nearly the same name (just differ by a question mark) shown together:
1. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179418.0
2. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1163283.0
And the only difference is the thread was from 2013 and 2015.
What is the criteria for mods to merge two topics like that, or just let them be?

I don't think they will or they have ever done such thing. Take a look at the gambling section, every 5 days there is a thread about ''gambling strategy'' or ''best bitcoin casino'' etc etc, you get the idea. I have never seen any of those threads merged or deleted

The forum has no merge function. One day when the new forum software comes... one day...

If not merged, one of the threads can be locked.
I don't think it will matter which one gets locked (or even both could get locked).

Something similar to quora's merge would be good. Too many dupe topics keeps popping up, just for sig spammers to exploit it.

I was under the impression that there is a merge function.

It's not something that is easily done even if we had the function. When moderators have to handle two threads discussing the same thing here, one can only trash the less active one here (or keep both).

Actually we should see something in regards to that pretty soon. Eventually the new forum is going to bring a lot of needed features (the more get suggested by users the better).

I think that a merge function exists, but only admins can use it.

So if someone reports a thread because it's duplicated will the mods lock it or how can we report duplicate threads because there are plenty of them

Normally they delete one of them

Wouldn't be sure about that, new threads talking about the same things are allowed AFAIK, your report is likely to be ignored or marked bad , depending on the moderator who views it.
Duplicate threads made by the same member(usually sale threads) are deleted.