Is questioning the same action but from completely different perspectives to be be considered duplicates?

Question

Currently Why didn't Obi-Wan try to end Vader's life to spare him from a horrible painful death by burning? [duplicate] has been marked as a duplicate of Why did Obi-Wan leave Vader on Mustafar?

Granted, I have edited the OP's question to make its distinction from the other question clearer, but even so I did it using text lifted directly from the OP's question itself, so no new information or ideas were introduced.

According to this commment,

one of the primary factors in determining if questions are duplicates is if the answer (or answers) to one address the other.

In this case, as OP mentions, the linked question does not answer the question asked. (That answer says 'OWK didn't kill Vader because he was his friend' when the Op's question is 'If Vader was his friend, why didn't OWK try to mercy-kill him to spare him being burned alive?')

Why is this considered a duplicate in this case? Are there any other factors for deciding duplicates I am missing?

Answer 1

To me, based on my experience on the site, there are a few reasons/situations where a question is marked as a duplicate. To me, I see these requirements being "either/or" requirements. If either of these are applicable, the "new" question is a possible duplicate.

• The question has been asked before and the "original" question has an answer. It does not have to have a correct or accepted answer. It just has to have an answer.
• Another question exists that has an answer that sufficiently addresses the same issues as the "new" question. This is when the "original" question may or may not have actually asked the same root question, but at least one of the answers posted on the "original" could be lifted and re-used on the "new" question. For discussion on this, refer to Why are questions considered duplicates although they ask different things? and When voting to close, MUST the “already answered” information come from the accepted answer?

To me, and your mileage may vary, the intentions of, and reasons for the question are 100% irrelevant. I don't care that you're just curious, or that your little daughter asked you a question, or even that you're doing homework; none of that makes a bit of difference as far as whether or not the question is valid or on-topic.

If none of the answers on the "original" question sufficiently answer the "new" question, then the "new" OP needs to explain why the questions are different and edit the "new" question to sufficiently differentiate itself from the "original".

I personally tend to try to boil questions down to what I feel is their real essence, or crux of the matter.

This makes a particular difference in situations like the Terminator vs Elephant question. To me, the fact that OP wanted to eventually judge whether or not the Terminator is able to push/pull/lift more than an elephant is irrelevant; to me, the crux of the question is "How much can a Terminator push/pull/lift?"

That's what's going on with the Vader/Obi-Wan questions, for me.

The question "Why did Obi-Wan leave Vader on Mustafar" boils down to "Why didn't Obi-Wan kill Vader or capture him?" The question has an answer. It has multiple answers. One of them is highly upvoted and has been accepted, but that is irrelevant here.

The question "Why didn't Obi-Wan try to end Vader's life to spare him from a horrible painful death by burning?" takes it from a slightly different angle, but boils down to "Why didn't Obi-Wan kill Vader out of mercy?"

I see no appreciable difference between asking why Obi-Wan did not kill/capture Vader, and asking why Obi-Wan didn't kill Vader out of mercy. Answering why Obi-Wan did not kill Vader is going to inherently include Obi-Wan let Vader suffer.

Even still, I initially refrained from voting to close. I wanted to allow the OP or anyone else to come back and try to explain why thought there was a difference. An hour or so after, despite continuing discussion, my opinion remained unchanged, so I went over the criteria/situation again.

• The question has been asked before, albeit with a different intention or reason for the question.
• The "original" question has an answer. Technically, the fact that there is an answer is all that is required. Someone has attempted to answer.
• The "original" question has an answer which does address the "mercy killing" angle. It is not the accepted answer, but that does not matter.

I was willing to hear reasons why the questions are distinctively different, or why the existing non-accepted answer was not sufficient, but the "new" OP never did that to my satisfaction.

So, I voted to close.

See also:

• Are multiple variations of a question with subtle distinctions duplicate?
• Should questions tagged as duplicates because of an answer be treated different?

Answer 2

If you believe that a question has been closed as a duplicate when in fact it just addresses a similar issue, but differs distinctly, the best thing to do is explain why you think they differ, in the question itself.

We would all like to think that close votes are only cast after spending several minutes evaluating the similarities of both questions and then, with a heavy heart, declaring doom on the duplicate. But the fact is that if you see a question titled "Why did Obi-Wan not kill Vader", and another question loosely titled "Why did Obi-wan not kill Vader", chances are you'll get some close votes.

What you should do, if you're aware of the original question, is preface your new one with something like:

This question (Why did Obi-Wan leave Vader on Mustafar?) tackles the question from one angle, but I wish to ask about something a bit different.

Thus communicating clearly to the readers that this is not a duplicate, but a follow-up.

It's true that a dedicated reader would see differences that mean they're not duplicates, but in most cases, the onus is on the asker, just like the writer in any text, to communicate clearly. Don't wait for someone to realize it's not a duplicate when you can tell them, explicitly, why it isn't a duplicate.

As to why the question is still closed as a duplicate - you've edited it to say it isn't a duplicate (though again, I would recommend saying "this isn't a duplicate because X-Y-Z", rather than leaving the conclusion as an exercise to the reader), but that was 3 hours ago. To be reopened, a question goes into the reopen queue and waits for reviewers to approve it, but at this point it's still late night or early morning in the USA and most Europe, so it might take a while.

Answer 3

It's one of the primary reasons but it's not the only reason.

That said, there is a Stack Exchange Blog post that goes into this matter, and it's worthwhile extracting some relevant points from it:

1. Having one “perfect” form of a question that contains every possible answer to every slight variation of that question is a myth at best and actively harmful at worst.

2. Having dozens and dozens of variations of the same question is clearly bad.

3. What we want is on the order of 4 or 5 similar-but-not-quite-the-same duplicates to cover all possible search terms and common permutations of the question. It is also OK for these duplicates to have their own answers so people who find them don’t have to click yet again to get to a good answer.

My opinion here is that your question falls into a slightly grey area between categories 2 and 3 (with the obvious caveat that we don't have "dozens and dozens of variations" of this particular question): it doesn't feel significantly different enough to be unambiguously a "3" (it really is just the same question but with a reason attached), but yet it's also not quite a "2" either.

My suggestion to you is to reword it to focus more on the mercy-killing aspect; perhaps asking if mercy-killing is compatible with the Jedi Way and then quoting this specific case as an example.