It appears to be typical that when a user links two issues together they put in a comment like:

"This is a duplicate of JRA-999"

What they don't realize is that this comment gets attached to both the original issue where it makes sense, and to the target issue (JRA-999) where it makes no sense at all. Now there is a circular link on JRA-999 with no indication of where the other issue came from.

The workarounds that we use for this are:
1. Never attach comments when linking, but then add a separate comment afterwards.
2. Be very careful to word the comment so it makes sense on both ends (e.g. "JRA-1111 is a duplicate of JRA-999")

These are tolerable, but it requires that everyone carefully read the documentation.

I think the web interface could be improved to make this clearer. Some possibilities:

• put some wording to make it clear that this comment will be attached to both issues.
• allow the user to write two comments, one for each issue (maybe defaulting one from the other)
• only attach the comment to the source issue
• put some extra text into the target comment. e.g. "Linked from JRA-1111: this is a duplicate of JRA-999"