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1. B is asking the same question as A. This is pretty uncontroversial; When does the Doctor actually tell River his name? and How does River Song know The Doctor's name? are pretty transparently asking the same question (there may be better examples of this, but this was a recent one that was easy to find).

2. B is asking a different question to A, but the answer to A is the answer to B. This is a little controversial, but I don't think it's terribly so. Let's look at some examples:

• Did Bellatrix really love her husband? and Did Bellatrix Lestrange have any affection towards Voldemort? are slightly different questions. The first is about Bellatrix's relationship to Rodolphus, the second is about her relationship to Voldemort. However, these two questions have basically the same answer; alexwlchan and I use the same quote, but frame it in slightly different context.

  However, the framing context has no bearing on whether or not the answers are the same. The existence of my answer does not benefit the site. It also doesn't actively harm it, which is part of the reason I'm not freaking out trying to get it deleted¹

However, the reason I vote this way is because (and I know there's a meta discussion on this, but can I find it? Nooo.) the fact that A doesn't have useful answers doesn't affect whether or not B is a dupe. That's actually part of the reason I VTC'd What is Tolkien trying to say in this letter?. Wad, the OP on that question, pointed out that the answers to the dupe (Was Elrond, in Tolkien's opinion, more inherently powerful than Galadriel?) weren't satisfying because they were based on opinion rather than from authorial intent. This is completely true.

For example, consider my answer to Is MODOK planned to appear in the MCU? (I've linked to a specific revision to make my point better). I initially wrote this answer as:

That's an example of the system working properly. Another example of the system working properly is on http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/92282/31051, and an answer which has since been deleted. The answer read:

Picking on myself again, consider my answer to How could Treebeard call for war without an Entmoot?. In that answer, I have a footnote which reads:

Imagine if someone asked "Why is Bregalad named Quickbeam?" That would be a terrible question because it's answered immediately following the character's introduction, but imagine. If that question were then closed as a dupe of How could Treebeard call for war without an Entmoot? based on my answer, I would have a problem with that; if I took that single line, in isolation, and made it an answer, I would be disappointed in myself. That line is not an answer.

I'll leave aside the fact that many correct answers get fewer than 5 upvotes (there are currently 4100 accepted answers with scores of 5 or lower, accounting for 30% of all accepted answers, although that excludes correct answers that aren't accepted).

• Any user can comment on their own posts, and users with 50 or more rep can comment on any. It's somewhat regrettable that comments don't bump the question (although on balance it's probably better that they don't), because that does limit the exposure of these questions, but recent questions that are still near the top of the list are going to get viewed by plenty of users who can cast votes anyway

• You only need 15 rep to flag a post for moderator intervention. The modhammer can open a closed question with only a single vote.

• 250+ users (of which there are about 2000) nominate their own question for reopening, and 3k+ users (of which there are currently over 200) can cast reopen votes on any question. It may take five votes to close a question, but it also only takes five votes to reopen it

• You only need 5 rep to participate in Meta at which point you can bring your case to that subset of the community (mostly long-time, experienced users) who participate here.

1. B is asking the same question as A. This is pretty uncontroversial; When does the Doctor actually tell River his name? and How does River Song know The Doctor's name? are pretty transparently asking the same question (there may be better examples of this, but this was a recent one that was easy to find).

2. B is asking a different question to A, but the answer to A is the answer to B. This is a little controversial, but I don't think it's terribly so. Let's look at some examples:

• Did Bellatrix really love her husband? and Did Bellatrix Lestrange have any affection towards Voldemort? are slightly different questions. The first is about Bellatrix's relationship to Rodolphus, the second is about her relationship to Voldemort. However, these two questions have basically the same answer; alexwlchan and I use the same quote, but frame it in slightly different context.

  However, the framing context has no bearing on whether or not the answers are the same. The existence of my answer does not benefit the site. It also doesn't actively harm it, which is part of the reason I'm not freaking out trying to get it deleted¹

However, the reason I vote this way is because (and I know there's a meta discussion on this, but can I find it? Nooo.) the fact that A doesn't have useful answers doesn't affect whether or not B is a dupe. That's actually part of the reason I VTC'd What is Tolkien trying to say in this letter?. Wad, the OP on that question, pointed out that the answers to the dupe (Was Elrond, in Tolkien's opinion, more inherently powerful than Galadriel?) weren't satisfying because they were based on opinion rather than from authorial intent. This is completely true.

For example, consider my answer to Is MODOK planned to appear in the MCU? (I've linked to a specific revision to make my point better). I initially wrote this answer as:

That's an example of the system working properly. Another example of the system working properly is on https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/92282/31051, and an answer which has since been deleted. The answer read:

Picking on myself again, consider my answer to How could Treebeard call for war without an Entmoot?. In that answer, I have a footnote which reads:

Imagine if someone asked "Why is Bregalad named Quickbeam?" That would be a terrible question because it's answered immediately following the character's introduction, but imagine. If that question were then closed as a dupe of How could Treebeard call for war without an Entmoot? based on my answer, I would have a problem with that; if I took that single line, in isolation, and made it an answer, I would be disappointed in myself. That line is not an answer.

I'll leave aside the fact that many correct answers get fewer than 5 upvotes (there are currently 4100 accepted answers with scores of 5 or lower, accounting for 30% of all accepted answers, although that excludes correct answers that aren't accepted).

• Any user can comment on their own posts, and users with 50 or more rep can comment on any. It's somewhat regrettable that comments don't bump the question (although on balance it's probably better that they don't), because that does limit the exposure of these questions, but recent questions that are still near the top of the list are going to get viewed by plenty of users who can cast votes anyway

• You only need 15 rep to flag a post for moderator intervention. The modhammer can open a closed question with only a single vote.

• 250+ users (of which there are about 2000) nominate their own question for reopening, and 3k+ users (of which there are currently over 200) can cast reopen votes on any question. It may take five votes to close a question, but it also only takes five votes to reopen it

• You only need 5 rep to participate in Meta at which point you can bring your case to that subset of the community (mostly long-time, experienced users) who participate here.

• Closing based on answers means that the user who asked the closed question has to go hunting for the answer to their question. This is true, but I think it's more a limitation of how we're applying this policy, not of the policy itself. Obviously this situation would be improved if the "this question is a dupe" dialogue pointed to the particular answer, but that's not something that's going to happen. One thing I often try to do is leave a comment saying "This is a dupe of question X, and in particular look at user Y's answer", which may help the questioner but may not help future travellers (since comments are ephemeral and subject to deletion at any time).

• Closing based on answers means that the user who asked the closed question has to go hunting for the answer to their question. This is true, but I think it's more a limitation of how we're applying this policy, not of the policy itself. Obviously this situation would be improved if the "this question is a dupe" dialogue pointed to the particular answer, but that's not something that's going to happen. One thing I often try to do is leave a comment saying "This is a dupe of question X, and in particular look at user Y's answer", which may help the questioner but may not help future travellers (since comments are ephemeral and subject to deletion at any time).