Caleb
Obviously I wouldn't expect re-importing a question from SE to work the same way twice. It's nice that it won't allow the same post to be moved over more than once. But this message isn't a great way to show that:
> ERROR: already imported CONTEXT: PL/pgSQL function _error(integer,text) line 1 at RAISE SQL function "new_sequestion" statement 1
This isn't the only time I've been dumped raw output from PostgreSQL. The site should probably catch and display these more gracefully in general, and with friendlier messages for cases like this where we know what happened and expect users to make the mistake.
In the mean time for re-imports I would suggest using that as a chance to add any answers that were not imported last time. Don't muck with any that were, but if new answer ids are in the list, use the re-import of a known question to add answers.
Top Answer
Jack Douglas
in brief: we need the raw errors (for now), and we've fixed the importing issue
> The site should probably catch and display these more gracefully in general, and with friendlier messages for cases like this where we know what happened and expect users to make the mistake.
For now, we are [planning to keep the error dumps](https://topanswers.xyz/meta?q=428#a472) as they are really very useful at this stage of development. Later on we'll tidy that up and do without them.
> I would suggest using that as a chance to add any answers that were not imported last time. Don't muck with any that were, but if new answer ids are in the list, use the re-import of a known question to add answers.
> As an addendum about how I think this should work, importing anything that is an answer post should never post it as a question ... it should always look for and use the question post (and import that too if not found). This would allow answers to be added one by one to existing questions as appropriate (similar to re-importing).
We've followed those suggestions to the letter and added in a few extras:
* re-importing will simply add any additional answers that weren't previously imported (if any) but will not touch the ones that were
* importing with just an answer id will no longer import that answer *as a question* (which was always a bug of course), but will instead import the answer *along with the question*.
* you can now use either urls (all the SE formats I know about) or ids interchangeably
Answer #2
Caleb
As an addendum about how I think this should work, importing anything that is an answer post should never post it as a question ... it should always look for and use the question post (and import that too if not found). This would allow answers to be added one by one to existing questions as appropriate (similar to re-importing).