Ambiguous dupe situation

Question

This relates to Name of a Sci-Fi Book, where humanity is rebuilt on a new planet, after being wiped out.

ArtSabintsev posted the question in 2014, and stated in a comment Oldcat's answer that it was Safehold, that JohnP's post of it being "Helm" was the correct one. When O.M.Y. posted in 2016 more details about Safehold, the querent said that was the correct one. Given we have a notice in 2017 that the wrong answer was tagged correct, I moved the Dupe target of a few questions over to instead point to Novel(s) based on humanity fleeing from Earth and regressing to a pre-industrial state on a Colony so as to escape detection, which was the next best accepted answer.

I'm not certain if I goofed in assuming that ArtSabintsev did indeed accept the wrong answer or not. I don't think I hurt anything by changing the dupe target, but I also wanted to fess up to the community in case I did.

Answer 1

There isn't much of a question to answer but I wanted to document the evidence that the correct answer to this question is in fact the Safehold series.

While you've done nothing wrong, with changing the dupe target, and it was probably a safe bet to do so, there wasn't really a need to.

We can break the timeline of events down into two specific time periods:

• End of March 2014 and initial acceptance,
• Beginning of January 2016 and change of acceptance.

End of March 2014

Two answers were posted around the same time, the first by JohnP suggesting Helm by Stephen Gould. The second by Oldcat proposing David Weber's Safehold series. With these two synopsis at hand, the OP had felt that Gould's Helm was the closer of the two, stating:

This is the one! This sounds exactly right! Wow! So excited to read this now!
_{ArtSabintsev - March 27th 2014}

From Art's wording, we can guess that it was a closer match as opposed to the objectively right answer.

He'd also granted JohnP the accept on the same day (as time goes on the page number will change, the accept is noted under the rep for the post in quetion on the 27th of March 2014)/

Beginning of January 2016

The question stayed in this state for close on 2 years, until another user, O.M.Y, answered on the 7th of January 2016. This user was adamant about the book the OP was looking for being the Safehold series and provided a separate synopsis from the one provided by Oldcat, going on to explain his thoughts on why it couldn't be Helm (too old for the New Releases section) as well as providing the name of the protagonist and the book titles.

With the additional information, the OP returned and exclaimed his joy at O.M.Y. confirming it was in fact the Safehold series, stating:

YES! This is it!!!!!
_{ArtSabintsev - January 7th 2016}

... Reading your description jogged/jiggled my memory - this was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much!
_{ArtSabintsev - January 7th 2016}

After O.M.Y's answer, ArtSabintsev granted Oldcat the accept and in doing so knowingly unaccepted JohnP's answer (as above, documented on January 7th 2016).

From the passage of events it seems clear ArtSabintsev is certain the series is the Safehold series, and the similarities in the Helm book was just a slip up on OPs part.

Answer 2

I was about to go back to that post that I made a few years ago to say that I finally read Helm and finished it as of today.

Helm was indeed the incorrect book due to timing, but I still decided to read it as the premise was similar.

Do with that information what you deem correct.