Is it good or bad form to copy my answer from a duplicate to the canonical question?

Question

I answered a question that was shortly afterward closed, correctly, as a duplicate. I put significant time and effort into developing the answer, so I'd hate for it to be lost because of its question's current "duplicate" status. I also believe it includes a perspective and information not currently addressed in the "canonical" question.

Is it considered bad form to copy my answer to the canonical question? If I do copy it, should I delete the one associated with the now-duplicate question? Do answers get "lost" because they exist in duplicates of other questions? Should the two questions be merged?

The question in question: What's the Reason for Naming Major Second a Diminished Third?

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Related issues:

• Handling of duplicates: add backlink, merge?
• Can an old question be a duplicate of a new question?

Answer 1

It's not bad per say, but duplicate questions are kind of treated different from other closed questions. They are closed to new answers, but in a way to draw attention to the canonical and the phrasing and wording can help broaden the search results for new users that have the same question. The closed duplicates do get cross linked so it's very easy to go from the canonical to the closed duplicates.

There are ways to merge the two in extreme cases, but due to the two examples being very different I don't recommend it as while the answer is the same, talking about the example is different and the other answer would be very out of place in the other question.

If you do choose to put your answer on the canonical question, I'd recommend deleting the old one as there are auto flags around directly copied content.