This is just an introspection post, after I noticed some behavior.

On the easier and more direct questions, we often see "parrot" behavior as users scrabble to collect the low-hanging fruit of "easy points".

But should not this behavior be possibly controlled?

What are the programmatic metrics that might be used to control this behavior?

Suppose I ask, for example:

> 
> How do I print 'Hello, World!' in Java?
> 
> 
> 

Within just one minute, five users would attempt to answer it. But they are not really doing anything useful for Stack Overflow, if they all parrot one another.