Is there a mechanism in place to stop duplicate questions?

Yes – when you type a question, similar questions will show up and you can discard yours if you want to.

A belated welcome to Fluther!

There are two options available.
1.) Up in the top right corner of the Fluther page, there is a Search box. Type in one of the key words, and it pulls up a list of questions already asked that have the same word. If the word has been used frequently, it may take expanding the list by clicking on “See All”.

2.) If the search isn’t used first, when creating a new question, there is a function that will pull up previous questions with the same key word or words. Then you can decide if one is too closely similar and abandon it or continue with the process.

Fluther does not forbid duplicate questions. It also does not condone asking identical or very similar questions soon after the first one is posted. Do as @Pied_Pfeffer suggests and decide for yourself whether your question is a duplicate or not.

Good answering, jellies!

It is also worth considering how much time has passed since a question was last asked. Would a new discussion be likely to generate new and/or more useful answers (due to the passage of time or membership turnover)? If so, it may very well be asking again. There’s often a big difference, after all, between reposting a question that was asked yesterday and reposting a question that was asked last year.