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If a high-rep user rolls-back an edit that a low-rep OP made to defend their question, would this not cause the community to see that the question was up for review, but not see any apparent change to the question due to the roll-back. In that case, whoever reviews the question will probably vote to leave the question's status unchanged. The OP's points would not be seen and properly evaluated by the reviewer.

This would undermine SE's "due process".

For the specifics, please go here.

Another thing that's odd about this is that the question was flagged by the OP, and the mod cited a link to "the policy" but that that link was to a question written by a mod who later forced out of the mod role.

The flag message and response were:

There was nothing wrong with this question and the supposed "duplicate" question was completely unrelated to this question. This is just a case of two completely different questions having the same answer. It should not have been closed. – phil1008 14 hours ago Declined - This was correctly closed as per policy: Closing Story-Ident questions as duplicates (where there's no acceptance)

However, a comment on another closed-as-dup policy question says

"Duplicate" gives the wrong impression, sorry. The real reason for closing this question is that the discussion here is now obsolete, having been superseded by the later question from Richard. All further discussion should be made on the newer question, so this one should be closed in such a way as to direct people there instead

Thus it appears that the policy on closing story-id questions as dups is defined elsewhere. However, the mod cited an older and presumably obsolete post as the current policy.

So where is the "question from Richard" that supersedes the posts from Valorian and John O? And, does this question represent the latest on what the current policy actually is?

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    You've quoted my comment on a post from 2014 but you seem to have misunderstood it. The policy on closing story-ID questions as dupes is defined in this 2015 post (the same one cited by whoever handled your flag), and my comment indicated that the 2014 post was closed as a duplicate of the 2015 post (by Richard, who later changed his username to Valorum) where the current policy was decided upon. That 2015 post defines the policy, and everyone is saying that so there's actually no contradiction.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 1 at 13:41
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    A vote to close is not an "attack". There is no need to "defend" a question from a vote to close. Especially a vote to close as a duplicate. A duplicate means "we know the answer to your question and it is over here". If your question gets a VTC as a duplicate, that means your question has an answer and you will know the answer when you follow the link to the duplicate. This is a good thing for you, not an "attack". If the duplicate does not answer your question, then that it something that you can edit into your question to clarify why the dupe doesn't work.
    – Todd Wilcox
    Commented Aug 25 at 16:20
  • A vote to close is a rebuke to the person who contributed the question to the site. If the question really is a duplicate, then the OP won't feel too bad for not having been the first to ask the question. But when a unique question is closed as a duplicate because the answer happens to be the same as the answer to another question, the poster will be discouraged from participating in the community. The community is divided 51/49 about a rule that essentially says that every question where the answer is "Star Trek" is a duplicate of the first question where the answer was "Star Trek".
    – phil1008
    Commented Aug 25 at 19:18

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I fail to see where any "due process" was undermined. Your question was

  • asked
  • answered
  • answer accepted
  • closed
  • reviewed for reopening
  • left closed
  • reviewed for reopening a second time
  • left closed a second time.

During this process the question was reviewed by 6 different users with sufficient reputation to enact the privileges they earned.

I also concur that current site policy was followed, i.e., closing identification questions as duplicates when they have the same answer and that answer is accepted on both posts.

Your edits were also correctly rolled back as they provided no new detail to the actual question to distinguish it from the duplicate, nor did you reject the answer you originally accepted. Commentary on site policy does not belong in questions, it belongs on meta. Some comments below the question can be useful to help guide other users to the discussion in same.

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    Please update your answer to reflect the fact that the OP made changes after the first "left closed" but then prior to the second review, the OP's changes were rolled back by high-rep user. After that, then there was a review comment "Left closed in review as "Original close reason(s) were not resolved" by DavidW, fez, NJohnny".
    – phil1008
    Commented Aug 1 at 16:25
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In this case your "edit" was merely a rant about the current (and widely accepted) policy about duplicates, something we've thrashed out over a considerable period of time. As such, your edit was irrelevant to the question being asked, and was correctly rolled back. The appropriate forum to make a complaint about policy is Meta, not to try to litigate it on the site itself.

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The fact that the present duplicate policy is based on a post written by the devilishly handsome but rakish former Moderator Richard is also a total irrelevance. It's heavily upvoted by the community and that's what's important, not who proposed it and your surprisingly well-informed and strong feelings about them.

We've discussed this endlessly. I'm sorry you don't like the policy and feel the closing your question as a duplicate is "an attack", but that's not the case. It's just how we roll, I'm afraid. We don't want endless versions of what fundamentally amounts to the same question asked in a variety of different ways from clogging up the site.

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    What you say is the "current (and widely accepted) policy about duplicates" is a link to a question that you posed, which misrepresents the community consensus established by yet another earlier question. But your answer currently has 21 votes and the first opposite answer has 19, and the second opposite answer has 16 votes. It's close to a tie. If more vote, perhaps we can establish "how we roll" democratically.
    – phil1008
    Commented Aug 1 at 7:45
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    @phil1008 The 19-scoring answer says essentially the same as the 22-scoring answer (don't close if there's no OP confirmation), and the 16-scoring answer doesn't really propose any policy but poses a question instead.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 1 at 14:14
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    The current close-second-place answer says " I disagree with the idea of closing dupes without OP confirmation." That is not the same as current first-place answer which says "Questions should only be closed as duplicates where both answers are accepted, regardless of the similarity between them." - this very different (and I think ridiculous) policy.
    – phil1008
    Commented Aug 1 at 16:16
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    @phil1008 - Both of those positions are essentially identical. Answer 1 = "questions should only be closed as duplicates where both answers are accepted". Answer 2 = "If only one question has a known correct answer, then we should leave the other open." There are obvious elements of nuance here, but one answer isn't oppositional to the other and I upvoted theirs as being a sensible addendum to mine.
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 1 at 16:38
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    @phil1008 The policy is that we close ID questions as duplicates if and only if both answers have OP confirmation. Saying "we should close if both OPs confirmed" and "we shouldn't close if one of the OPs didn't confirm" are essentially equivalent. I'm not sure what you're misunderstanding here.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Aug 1 at 18:38
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    Your current policy, as I understand it, is that if two different story-id questions have accepted answers that refer to the same story (even different parts of the same story) then the second question is automatically declared to be a duplicate of the first. The first policy answer represents this position. The second policy answer requires the OP of the second question to agree that their question is a duplicate of the first before it should be closed as a duplicate.
    – phil1008
    Commented Aug 1 at 19:31
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    @phil1008 - That is indeed correct. And since you've accepted your answer, the first case would apply; "questions should only be closed as duplicates where both answers are accepted"
    – Valorum
    Commented Aug 2 at 11:51
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    @phil1008: It may be worth noting (and I try to include this in a comment when I dupe-close questions) that a question being closed does not mean that you can't receive upvotes for it. In fact, I've found that it sometimes increases voting [citation needed] because there's that explicit link that people will often follow and then cast votes.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Aug 12 at 18:46
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    @phil1008 "Confirmation" here means accepting an answer. Since you accepted an answer, you confirmed it answers the question. And that same answer also answers another question and thus this is a dupe.
    – Clockwork
    Commented Sep 2 at 11:42
  • @Clockwork This is the flawed reasoning that I've been trying to explain. "What TV show featured the character Data?" and "What TV show introduced the concept of a Holodeck?" are not dups.
    – phil1008
    Commented Sep 2 at 16:44
  • @phil1008 - They're not the same answer though. The first is Star Trek: The Next Generation (first appearance of Data was in TNG: Encounter at Farpoint) and the other is Star Trek: The Animated Series (first appearance of the holodeck, then called the "recreation room" was TAS: The Practical Joker). You're right that they're not dupes of each other, but I don't think you realised that.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2 at 16:45
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    @phil1008, Now if you asked "What TV show featured Captain Picard?", "What TV show featured Commander Riker?", "What TV show featured Lt. Commander Data?", "What TV show featured Lt. Worf?", "What TV show featured Lt. Tasha Yar?", etc, those would all very clearly be duplicates of each other.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2 at 16:52
  • Well, you got me there! The question is then if the answer to both questions was the same, (say Star Trek TNG) would one question be a dup of the other?
    – phil1008
    Commented Sep 2 at 16:55
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    @phil1008 - Absolutely. Or else, as with my example above, you'd end up with endless iterations of the same question. If you go over to Quora, there are more than 30 questions about the IQ of characters on TNG, the first of which basically answers the next 29 down.
    – Valorum
    Commented Sep 2 at 16:57

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