How can this question be a duplicate of a question that is not at all the same question?

Question

This question was closed as a duplicate of this question. The reason stated was that the the answers to the latter question address the former question as well. The problem is that the two questions are different. The content of the answers to the second question that addressed the first question is not content that would automatically be necessary to answer the second question. If someone would answer the second question with just that content, it would not be an answer because that content alone does not answer the second question.

Now suppose someone wants to answer the first question. There is nowhere to do so. You can't answer it on the first question because that question is closed. You can't answer it on the second question because it wouldn't answer the second question. How, then can the first question be closed as a duplicate of the second question, when that is effectively saying that we are not allowing any other answers to the question?

See also here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here which seem to agree that this type of question should not be considered a duplicate.

Answer 1

They are duplicates

The scope of the original question, "Do Hogwarts Houses have quotas?", is broad enough that to answer it talking about the number of students at Hogwarts seems important, if not necessary. And that is exactly what has happened here the top and accepted answer has spoken about that.

It's been spoken at by length on meta recently so I'll only give the TL;DR version. Answers can be used to assess if questions are duplicates or not, people disagree on how much they can be used but they can be. In this case @Slytherincess' answer can be copied over to the dupe without changing it and it would answer the question fine, sure it would have some extra rambling but it would answer the question.

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On a side note, duplicate questions are not a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact. I think half the reason people are arguing so much about dupe closures at the moment is that they think it is some bad thing whereas it is not. Dupes have a special place on SE, they serve as signposts to the main question, they are not subject to auto deletion and good dupe questions should and are usually upvoted. See this ASOIAF/GoT question from recently that was dupe closed yet has 4 upvotes (+4/-1).

Answer 2

The closed question was reopened by 5 voters, and I managed to post an answer to it before it was summarily reclosed by a single voter with a gold badge.

As you can see, my answer cites many passages to develop an argument that there were many hundreds of students, probably around 800. My answer does not in any way shape or form address whether there are house quotas. I can't imagine that anyone thinks that my answer would be a good answer to the question about house quotas.

That should be all the proof necessary to show that the questions are not duplicates. As I pointed out in the question post here, and in subsequent comments, closing such questions as duplicates prevents potentially good answers from being posted.

Answer 3

Of course, you're absolutely correct. "What happens if there's an uneven distribution of student personalities" is in no way, shape, or form the same question as "How many students are there". There's no need to even look at the answers, it's so blindingly obvious that the questions are different.

Answers can be useful in edge cases, where an argument could be made either way. As it stands, the fact that one of the answers to the "uneven distribution" question happened to mention, kind of by way of introduction, a number that is possibly not the answer to the "how many students" question, is totally and completely irrelevant.

This is not to say that your question isn't a duplicate. It's just that every time someone has tried to ask it, it has been marked as a duplicate of this same, unrelated question, so the site does not have a good place to point people who are wondering how many students are at Hogwarts. It really is a shame that people here place more importance on reducing the number of questions than on having good answers to questions.

Answer 4

I'll take one more stab at this

Let's imagine a good sample answer to each one. To my mind, you can't get better than an answer which quotes a specific passage in the series under discussion where the question is explicitly answered.

So, here is my sample answer to the open question:

Yes, there are house quotas. If Harry's name was Zimmers it is possible that he would have been sorted into Hufflepuff. This can be demonstrated from the following quote from Goblet of Fire:

"I actually had a great uncle in Slytherin," Ron said.

"Really?" asked Harry, surprised.

"Well it wasn't his fault. By the time they got up to Weasely there were no spots left in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, and he wasn't clever enough to get into Ravenclaw."

And here is my sample answer to the closed question:

There are 2,500 students attending Hogwarts. This can be seen from the following quote from Order of the Phoenix:

"Hermione, Umbridge said she would confiscate every broomstick in the castle if she has to!"

"Er, Harry, there are 2500 students here. Does she really think she can fit 2,500 brooms in her office?"

"Come off it, Hermione. You know that most students don't even have their own brooms."

As you can see, these answers have absolutely nothing in common. Each one would be a great answer to the question it would be posted to (assuming the quotes are accurate), but would be a horrible answer to the other question.

This shows, beyond any doubt, that these are two fundamentally different questions. If one of these questions is closed then there is a great answer that will never be posted, as it would be a horrible answer to the other question.

Answer 5

I'm sure everyone is sick of this post already, but here's a (somewhat) new angle as to why these questions shouldn't be duplicates. (This was already discussed somewhat in Chat starting here, but I think it should be brought here so it can be included in the voting.)

Today I edited my answer to the question about the number of students in Hogwarts to add in some evidence and counter-evidence. As a potential explanation for a certain discrepancy, I suggested that Ravenclaw may have had many more students than the other houses (in Harry's year). I pointed out that this could account for why Gryffindor has classes with Slytherin and Hufflepuff but not with Ravenclaw.

I then checked to see if there was any discussion on this site about Harry never having classes with Ravenclaw, and I found this question which asks if Harry ever had classes with Ravenclaw.

According to the stricter standard for duplicates, the old question should be closed as a duplicate of the question I answered.¹ This is because even though "How many students attended Hogwarts?" and "Did Harry ever have class with Ravenclaw?" are two different questions, the latter is answered by one of the answers to the former, and thus the information already exists and is at risk of being repeated. To quote from TheLethalCarrot's answer (name adjusted to reflect this case):

In this case @Alex's answer can be copied over to the dupe without changing it and it would answer the question fine, sure it would have some extra rambling but it would answer the question.

Just a couple of hours later I was reading this question about whether Dumbledore set up the Potters to be killed. In one of the answers I saw a quote which said that the secret cannot be forced out of the secret-keeper. I suspected that there was bound to be a question here about that very issue, and I found this question. Therefore, according to the strict duplicate policy the latter question should be closed because it is already answered in an answer to the former question. Once again we can say:

In this case @erip's answer can be copied over to the dupe without changing it and it would answer the question fine, sure it would have some extra rambling but it would answer the question.

I subsequently found another example while reading this question about how Arthur Weasley knew to send his Patronus to Grimmauld Place. One of the answers stated that a patronus has the ability to find someone, and tried to prove this from the fact that Snape must have been able to locate Harry in the Forest of Dean by following his patronus. There is another question that asks how Snape was able to find Harry in the Forest of Dean. Even though these are two different questions, the latter is answered by the answer to the former. Once again we can apply TheLethalCarrot's criterion (and this time we don't even have to change the name because it's the same user):

In this case @Slytherincess' answer can be copied over to the dupe without changing it and it would answer the question fine, sure it would have some extra rambling but it would answer the question.

I found these three situations with virtually no effort, and without spending any time "searching them out". I imagine that there are probably dozens of other such situations.

This would mean that anytime someone incorporates information from an answer into an answer to another question they will be rendering the first question a duplicate.

Are we really going to close all these questions just because an answer to a different question contains information that could be an answer to the current question as well?

In fact, it is even possible that someone could deliberately take content from an answer to one question and use it as part of an answer to a different question, rendering the first question a duplicate. (I don't know why someone would want to do that, but it's possible, and it would be hard to prove nefarious intent.)

In sum, my point is that under the strict interpretation of "duplicate", almost any question can be made into a duplicate of any other. There are probably already dozens of such situations. This, I would argue, is indicative of a major flaw in the strict definition of "duplicate".

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¹ The question has since been closed as a duplicate of a different post, but that is not relevant to my argument.

Answer 6

New Solution/Compromise

I have not changed my mind from my question and previous two answers where I strongly argued that the two questions are not duplicates. However, even if we assume that the questions are duplicates, there is another possible solution.

In this case, the question about the number of students in Hogwarts was closed as a duplicate of the question about whether houses have quotas because in an answer to the latter question Slytherincess discussed the number of students at Hogwarts. I.e. since the number of students was discussed in an answer to another question it is considered as if the question about the number of students has already been answered.

Now if we look at Slytherincess's actual answer we find that there are only two mentions of the number of students in Hogwarts. The first paragraph mentions two aspects of this:

1. J.K. Rowling once said that there are around 1,000 students.
2. There is an article that discusses the number of students.

In the third paragraph she writes that the linked article suggests that if there were 1,000 students (the article disagrees with this estimate) there would be 36 per year per house.

Beyond this there is no other mention of number of students.

When we read the rest of the answer (which argues that there are not quotas) we see that none of the argumentation is supported by the alleged number of students. No argumentation is contradicted by it either, but no argumentation is related to it.

There is only one line of evidence that is actually related to the question of quotas, and that is whether the Sorting Hat has ever placed a student into the wrong house. Slytherincess notes that the Sorting Hat admits that it is possible for it to make a mistake, but that J.K. Rowling has stated that it has never been wrong. (Even this doesn't fully address the quota question; all it tells us is that according to Rowling no one was ever sorted into a house other than the one they should have been in.)

What we see here is that the alleged number of students played no role whatsoever in answering the question; it is entirely extraneous information.

If all mention of the number of students would be removed we would still have the same answer, namely, that there do not seem to be quotas based on Rowling's statement that the Sorting Hat was never wrong.

Therefore, why don't we simply edit Slytherincess's answer and remove all mention of the number of student's at Hogwarts, which would not affect her answer to the question about quotas. Then the other question would not be a duplicate, and could be reopened and receive all the possible answers to the specific question of how many students there are at Hogwarts.

I would imagine that ideally, Slytherincess herself should edit her answer. However, she hasn't been seen on this site in almost a month, so that is unlikely to happen.

The best solution would then seem to be for us to make the edits, which will now allow answers to the question of how many students there are that would otherwise not have been postable.