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To clarify, if there are two questions that are essentially asking the same basic question, about the same title (in this case The Walking Dead), but each question is asking about a different medium (television show vs. comic), are they considered duplicates?

The two questions in this case (linked above) are "How long has it been since the initial outbreak?" for the television show, up to a specific episode, and "How much time has passed in the Walking Dead from book 1 to 94?". In both cases, I find the end point rather arbitrary (although I haven't read up to book 94, so perhaps there's a major event that lends a certain significance to this end point?). Also, in both cases what seems to be of primary interest is how long Rick has been in the hospital (it has been a while since I read the first comics, but iirc the beginning of the TV show is very faithful to the beginning of the comics, and it isn't until after Rick reaches the city that the plot starts to diverge significantly).

Should the two questions be edited into something more general, and merged, or left as separate questions?

2 Answers 2

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If the answers are the same, the questions are duplicate. Otherwise, they aren't. Duplicate questions are about meaning, not about textual resemblance.

The reason we close questions as duplicates is that answers for the duplicate also adequately answer the closed question.

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  • That was kind of where I was going with the part about how long Rick has been in the hospital. If the show and the comic are the same up until Rick gets out of the hospital, and the speculation "how long was it between the time of the outbreak and the time Rick woke up?" is the main part of both questions (leaving the rest as simply "they went to sleep in episode 12 and 14, so that's two more days..." etc.), are they really separate questions?
    – Beofett
    Apr 4, 2012 at 19:47
  • Is there value to saying "after Rick woke up, it was x days to arbitrary event y" in the comic, with a similar question asking for a calculation up to arbitrary event z in the show, or should both be combined into "how long was it between the time of the outbreak and the time Rick woke up?"? As it is, one could argue that "how long is it from episode 13 to the end of season 2" is different than "how long from the outbreak to the Cherokee Rose" question.
    – Beofett
    Apr 4, 2012 at 19:48
  • @Beofett I don't know either the TV show or the comic. I was replying to the general principle, If the answers are different, then breaking down the question this way sounds sensible.
    – user56
    Apr 4, 2012 at 19:56
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It's your perception - a lot more time has passed in the comic than in the show. The show is paltry in comparison, so it's not really about how long Rick has been in the hospital. I see no problem with them being separate questions.

EDIT: How much time has passed in the Walking Dead From Book 1 to 94? is asking how long has passed from after Rick's awakening to a specific point in the comic (which is much later than all the time that has progressed in the show at all, even more compare to Cherokee Rose specifically).

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  • A lot more time passed between the outbreak and the time Rick woke up from the coma in the comic than in the show? Or a lot more time has passed between the outbreak and issue 94 vs. the outbreak and the Cherokee Rose episode of the show?
    – Beofett
    Apr 4, 2012 at 19:55
  • The second - the amount of time between the outbreak and Rick's awakening was never made very clear in the comic IIRC.
    – Ian Pugsley
    Apr 5, 2012 at 0:59
  • One of my issues with these two questions is that the end-points (book 94 vs. Cherokee Rose) seem completely arbitrary. If the question had been asked earlier, maybe it would have been "how much time has passed in the Walking Dead from book 1 to book 8?". Should we have a new version of the TV question once season 6 ends?
    – Beofett
    Apr 5, 2012 at 13:22
  • @Beofett that's a good point, but it would still make them off-topic as too localized, not necessarily duplicates of each other.
    – Ian Pugsley
    Apr 5, 2012 at 13:28
  • That's why I'm leaning towards merging them into "how long after the outbreak did Rick wake up?", since that seems to be a fairly specific, non-arbitrary, yet interesting question that builds a good framework for either medium.
    – Beofett
    Apr 5, 2012 at 13:30
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    That drastically changes the meaning of really both questions, though. It's answered within the first, but fairly unrelated to the second. Generalizing to something like "How much time has passed in TWD?" would be fine, but I still think keeping them separate for each medium would be wise (considering the differences).
    – Ian Pugsley
    Apr 5, 2012 at 13:33

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