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What is the harm in Elbowin wanting to make his or her own contribution of help to the original poster? What does it matter if their contribution partially contained information that you had already provided? He or she might perhaps have thought, as a native German (assuming the information in their profile is correct), that their contribution contained some additional information that "fine-tuned" things further. I see no harm in that - it is better to have a lot of information than to have very little at all, even if that means that some bits are repeated here and there. I personally believe that it is rather stifling (perhaps even reminiscent of censorship) to try to create an atmosphere here where a user is discouraged from making a contribution when their contribution is (partially) going to contain similar information that an other user has already provided.... where a user is discouraged from expanding on information that is already provided. Keep that up and you will find that this board, which is already fairly silent to begin with (at least when compared to the other message boards on BtN), will eventually go dead. At least, I can't see how people would want to take the time and effort to help someone with their question when there is a negative atmosphere of this kind on the board... an atmosphere where you basically shouldn't touch a question when it has already been "touched" by an other user. This board shouldn't be some kind of "I was here first so go find some other thread to reply to!" kind of contest or whatever. That is not scientific (nor particularly inviting or welcoming, for that matter) and will thus hurt the scientific aims of this board.

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With that said, it is unfortunate that Elbowin's apparent eagerness to help appears to have caused some offence on your part, but I doubt that their actions were intentional or purely aimed at offending you. For one thing, they appear to be a long-time user (according to their profile) and I doubt that long-time users (who in my experience so far always have a respectable reputation) would resort to petty things such as that. I personally think that you might have interpreted their actions to be worse than they actually are, perhaps due to a mood that you might have been in at the time, as I also see no evidence of Elbowin "stalking" threads on the board that you have replied to and replying to those threads with answers that are similar to yours. I only see this current thread, where their answers contained information similar to yours. As such, to me, it seems a bit of a stretch to make it appear as if he or she was out to get you in some way.... or as if he or she were spamming the board. I don't see anything offensive or against the rules here.

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So, in the event that you will find yourself in a similar situation again in the future, perhaps it might be sensible to remember to breathe for a moment as well as remember that this board is scientific and not personal in nature, i.e. nothing is done as an immediate offence against you. Personal feelings or emotions (such as the irritation that you felt) have no place in places like this, because as soon as they do and even become a guiding force for certain (arbitrary?) rules or policies (which more often than not lead to censorship), scientific discussion is tainted (or the room for it is at the very least compromised) and ultimately killed off. Just imagine what would happen if all the scientists in any scientific field all took offence when a fellow scientist expanded on their theory or proved that their theory was false... if all those offended scientists even went so far as to launch lawsuits or something along those lines. There would be constant drama to such a degree that there would no longer be room and time for proper and clean science. Everything rational and factual would be stifled by everything emotional and irrational.

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As such, for the sake of this board, please try to keep this in mind the next time you feel irritated or otherwise emotional about something that was posted here. Let us not end up on the slippery slope of allowing emotions to interfere with science and scientific discussions.

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Proud first-time aunt to Emilia (born November 2015).