Why are people so eager to close questions as duplicates?

Question

Why are people so eager to close questions as duplicates? I can give only two examples and only because I answered the questions, so I believe there must be a lot of such duplicates, but in what universe are the linked duplicate questions really duplicates?

• Betatesting an android game. Best practices?
• Is it possible to design Android game(AndEngine) levels using XML?

Sometimes I have a feeling that somebody who doesn't understand the question but read something similar will just post the link and hit flag...

And just as related reading, this blog entry.

Answer 1

The general criterion I would think is this:

Does having this question remain open add anything that's not already covered by the other question?

It's possible to have countless minor variations on essentially the same question, and arguments could be made that they are in fact different questions, but are they really? If the original question contains information in it's answers that also answers the new question, then - IMO - it's a clear case of "close as duplicate".

The point I'm making here is that if question A was "what's 2+2?" and question B was "what's 2+3?", yes they are different questions which do have different answers, but if question A was answered in a way that explained how addition worked, then question B is clearly a duplicate.

This all depends on perspective. For me, close as duplicate is not a slap-down and it's not harsh moderation. It's actually something very different to those - it's actually a valid way of providing an answer to a question. So when I vote to close as duplicate, I'm most definitely not saying "you stupid person, that's been asked before, ha ha"; what I am saying is "here, read this other question, it contains the answer you're looking for".

So although it might not seem so on the surface, closing as a duplicate is really just another tool to help someone find the answer they want. That's a key distinction, and maybe it needs to come across more clearly in the stock text used for closing duplicates.

Answer 2

My two cents are that both of those example questions are really broad and asking for discussion points. People don't like the question so they'd prefer to close it. But they also see that some smaller aspect of the question has been answered by somewhere else, so they close the question as a dupe because they feel it's better than saying "not constructive".

The first question is a good question but a bit on the broad side. In particular, asking for "is there a good platform to do this" is begging for a list of links which doesn't make for a good answer. Even though the title of the "duplicate" question doesn't really match the question in the one you're pointing out, if you read it the guy is asking for the same thing, namely " I would like to release a partially complete, unpolished game on my website so people can try it out and give me feedback." Which makes it a dupe in spirit at least.

The second question doesn't pass the "what have you tried" smell test. So I think it's also too broad. "Give some link or example so that i can understand easily..." just shows lack of research/understanding on the issues. Also it seems like one could easily copy/paste the answer from the linked duplicate question and it would still work.