There have been many occasions where what I was about to say was already said by someone else so it made sense to abandon my post rather than clutter the Thread with repetition.
Much less frequently the OP supplies some key information at the last minute - which necessitates a re-write.
I have also suffered from losing Posts because I forgot to watch to see if they were accepted by the Forum.
I have learned to take a copy of a long post before I press send - because it can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with other Posts coming in.
Sometimes I compose long Posts in my text editor and then paste them into the Forum.
There have been many occasions where what I was about to say was already said by someone else so it made sense to abandon my post rather than clutter the Thread with repetition.
I don't see a problem with repetition. Two different people rarely say exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. Sometimes what one person says resonates with the person it is addressed to, while the same message, phrased a bit differently does not. The two people writing the responses could see that the content is basically the same, but have no way of knowing which will resonate and which won't.
It seems like a useless feature added just because it could be.
PaulS:
Two different people rarely say exactly the same thing in exactly the same way. Sometimes what one person says resonates with the person it is addressed to, while the same message, phrased a bit differently does not.
my point is that WE are supposed to be the smartest people in the room.
WE do software, and WE have entire systems crash and burn because the input goes high when we thought it should go low.
WE know how to fix things in code.
WE should have the ability to make decisions that are the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
in the event of a double post, you have ( and a huge THANK YOU to the designers) the ability to go back and edit your posts. a simple mistake in spelling, easy to fix now. if your post is duplicate, you can edit. if your post is wrong because of more information, you can fix it.
if your post is lost, you have two choices. do something else, let your help for the forum get wasted, or double your time and re-write your post. last week I took the time to re-write the post. today, I just moved on.
my personal point of view is that yes, you can walk on glass because doctors can use stitches and bandages. yes there are solutions to problems that are around us. but WHY leave the pot-hole there ??
I was replying to a different point - the matter of a post being lost for no reason when you hit the final "Post" button after preview. This is frequently recoverable from a draft or by going "back" to the preview and telling the browser to re-submit the details.
I cannot on account of that risk, believe anyone with experience of this forum would not actually wait for the thread to load and see that what they attempted to post, appeared in the final form.