Hi
Just for the sake of emptying this idea on forum, I wonder if some automatization could be implemented on searching two same or very much alike pieces, and then these two items would be displayed in Improvement hints. Referee would then send this proposal as a new merge request.
Maybe something like this could also be added already in the phase of adding new piece. Some sort of functionality which gives an alarm to the uploader, there is a very-very similar piece already on Numista, so that the user can check before adding new double / already existing piece on new page.
I would probably find it frustrating when swapping a piece, which would eventually be merged with another one that I already have in my collection. And since no announcements are there in place by Numista in such cases, user has redundant pieces in collection.
Over the course of last couple of years I have stumbled upon many same entries:
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic139769.html#p1120688
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic134026.html#p1078166
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic156774.html#p1224714
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic156593.html#p1223518
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic137499.html#p1102981
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic136736.html#p1097495
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic170515.html#p1302848
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic170339.html#p1301750
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic169470.html#p1296199
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic162458.html#p1257216
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic118419.html#p966293
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic103331.html#p856775
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic151097.html#p1190024
https://en.numista.com/forum/topic170644.html
maybe some more…
LP