It's not new, last time I checked mprep did such merging of post with similar contents.
Edit:
Here is a thread from Joker_josue where mod did such too
Reflection on moderation in service topicsIIRC I was the one who merged the posts (currently going through a large backlog).
Edit: It's either the post merged could be posted all together just using Horizontal rule to differentiate them from his perspective of posting, so if he (mprep) did the merging then it's the same issue with joker_josue.