Why was this question about maester chains closed?

Question

The question Can a maester's chain include multiple links of the same metal?:

A maester can be recognized by the chain he wears around his neck. The links of the chain can be made of every metal known to man. Each metal is related to a subject - silver for medicine, iron for warcraft, etc. Can a maester's chain include multiple links of the same metal?

was recently closed by two users as a duplicate of How long does it take to forge a Maester's chain?:

How many links are needed to forge a chain? Are more links prestigious than others? How long does it typically take to earn a full chain?

(quoteblocks above are the entire text of the respective questions, just so we aren't going by titles).

I was somewhat surprised that a question had been closed as a duplicate of a completely different but tangentially related question (both questions are about maesters' chains in the GoT/aSoIaF universe, but beyond that they're not asking the same thing at all). Checking the revision history of the accepted answer to the older question, I discovered that one of the close-voters had edited the answer to the new question into an answer to the older question, while the other one had left a comment justifying the closure on the basis that the older answer mentions the answer to the newer question.

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Current policy on duplicate closure based on answers says:

• Folks with specific, focused questions tend to not read massively broad FAQs even if they do find them.
• Finding specific information among multiple answers to massively broad FAQs is troublesome.

[...] normally the presence of identical answers is a pretty good indication that the questions themselves are the same (unless the answer itself is something trivial like the name of a character). But this doesn't hold if a question has managed to attract a lot of different answers [...]

To avoid looking silly then, I would strongly recommend using answers as more of a litmus test than as a policy: if you're already pretty sure the questions are duplicates, testing the answers of one against the other can easily confirm your suspicions. But don't close completely irrelevant questions as duplicates of one another simply because there's an animated gif that happens to apply to both...

Is it good practice to edit the answer to question B into a tangential remark in an existing answer to question A, then close B as a dupe of A, when A and B are asking different things?

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_{(Under normal circumstances, I'd just vote to reopen. But I don't have non-binding reopen votes here, and since the accepted answer to the newer question is mine, it would be conflict of interest for me to just hammer it open.)}

Answer 1

There are still people on this site who think that answers somehow magically make questions into duplicates, even though that totally misses the whole point of the Stack Exchange model.

"We're not gonna answer your question, because on this other question which happens to be about the same show but is otherwise unrelated, one of the three answers happens to mention in an aside a factoid that, if you squint and tilt your head just right, could possibly sorta-kinda answer your question. But good luck finding the relevant sentence fragment in all that text. Oh, and mwa ha ha ha ha."

This is no different than the old forum model of tech support on the internet: before Stack Overflow, it used to be, you'd find a thread where one of the replies clearly had the same problem as you, and then you'd have to read through three pages of posts from people of dubious expertise (and even more dubious English writing ability) to see if someone maybe mentioned a factoid that could help you. This is the model that Stack Overflow, and Stack Exchange after it, repudiated.

If two questions are duplicates, then EVERY good answer to one will answer the other. EVERY SINGLE GOOD ANSWER. Otherwise, the questions are not duplicates.

Answer 2

Copying your answer into the old question does seem odd to me, but the following was in Valorum's original answer to the old question back in 2014.

From the TV series, we can see that the chains seem to contain approximately 20 links and from a quote from GRRM we can see that a Maester can be awarded multiple links of the same metal if they are especially proficient in a particular area of knowledge.

So maybe they just added your answer to help highlight and reinforce the original phrasing in Valorum's answer.

Answer 3

Answers should not determine whether a question is closed. Questions must stand alone. I would like to highlight a specific comment which was made on this question:

@Randal'Thor If [Valorum] ever edits [his answer to the dupe target] to remove that whole section, not just the quote, then I will [vote to] reopen the question. [...]

That's not how this works. We don't dupe against answers, we dupe against questions. Duplication means "Any good answer to question A will also be a good answer to question B." Since that is clearly not the case here, I have voted to reopen and encourage others to do the same.

Answer 4

First things first. The quote had existed in Valorum's answer since March 4th 2014, just in link form, so nothing was stolen from your answer the other day.

Secondly, let's take a look at the final paragraph in the supposed "Policy" for duplicate questions and apply it to the two answers at hand here and then some older "policies" from actual users on this site on the same topic.

To avoid looking silly then, I would strongly recommend using answers as more of a litmus test than as a policy: if you're already pretty sure the questions are duplicates, testing the answers of one against the other can easily confirm your suspicions.

So don't use answers first, see if the questions are duplicates (or in this case reasonably similar) to justify looking at the answers.

Getting past all the precursory information in the dupe we're left with Can a maester's chain include multiple links of the same metal?. How does this relate to How many links are needed to forge a chain? Are more links prestigious than others? How long does it typically take to earn a full chain? one might ask, well.

• The ability for a chain to include multiple links of the same metal is relevant to both the first and third questions. The ability to acquire multiple links directly affects how many subjects one is required to master to achieve a "full chain". Given that multiple links are available, one does not have to master x subjects if x links are required for the chain.
• The time taken to achieve a full chain in canon varies, however, if receiving multiple links of the same metal (for the same study) is easier than earning a link of a new metal, it would shorten the time required for the acolyte to earn their "chain"

But don't close completely irrelevant questions as duplicates of one another simply because there's an animated gif that happens to apply to both...

Now from the above bulletpoints we can see that this was not simply a matter of "an animated gif that applies to both" but a possibly significant point in the answer that affects 2/3s of the points raised by the original asker. Although it was originally just a link, taking the information from the link and putting it into the answer has not changed the answer in any way, it is therefore not vandalism. The information was not stolen from another answer without attribution and is therefore not plagiarism.

Further from this older discussion on the matter, a high-rep, long-term active user suggests the benefits of duplicates, as well as the how the community tends to act and reasons for it.

We've already posted the information being searched for. Answering it again and again in multiple places makes the whole thing confusing as we start finding contradicting answers and information across the site (look at questions about "The Rule of Two" for an example of this). Users looking for the information get confused when there are more than one "right" answers or sources of information.

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If one wants to get into the details of the thought processes between myself and TheLethalCarrot in deciding its duplicacy, they can see it in our A Song of Ice and Fire chatroom starting from here.

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It is also worth noting that in the re-open review queue (I'll guess spurred by this question) there was a unanimous decision to leave the post closed as a duplicate. The decision was carried out by 3 very experienced reviewers, one of which is also very active in the tags in question.