How can this question be duplicate (Also, please revoke diamond status of @Keen)?

Question

I asked this question: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/83622/can-bifrost-bridge-reach-underground

It was closed. Then, I reached meta to resolve issues because I thought my question shouldn't be closed in its original form. I waited. Also, after a while, I agreed for the edit in the chat and pinged all involved users.

Then, a guy (who clearly participated in this question on meta and chat) took the idea and created a new question.

I clarified the question. Then, @Keen (who was also active during my question issue) opened my question and closed my question as duplicate. How can this previously asked question be duplicate?

To Stack Exchange employees:
If you want to encourage genuine content creation on the site, you must delete the other question (and move answer to mine). Also, as a strong message to diamonds, I suggest you revoke diamond access of @Keen (or, at least strongly warn him). This is no longer about democracy. This is like smashing the basic morals of constitution of a country.

Update:
Message of duplicate closure says:

This question has been asked before and already has an answer.

How is this applicable here?

Update 2:
How does the site deal with Plagiarism? Should I start doing that?

Answer 1

Quite frankly, you brought this on yourself. You were unnecessarily obtuse when people tried to fix your question, insisting on keeping it in a state that turned a reasonable (on-topic) question into an off-topic one. You were given numerous chances to fix it, and others even tried to help you get it into a good state, but you went so far as to roll back the edits to the originally poor wording. And to top that all off, you were rude to those trying to help you, and were not approachable about the issue.

The new question was asked some five hours after you rolled the question back, and after discussion there did not seem like any way to appease you, so the other question was asked. It was only then that you acquiesced to people's suggestions and made the question on-topic. At this point, you're too late.

This has nothing to do with content creation or mods that abuse their power. The other question asker was interested by the question and asked when it was clear the original was not going to be salvaged. The new question has been well-recieved and fostered several good answers and some good discussion. Keen acted in accordance with normal procedures for duplicates, and I've seen no evidence anyone is singling you out.

You did this to your question, nobody else.

Edit: The question was asked before and has an answer. When you wrote the question, it was not a duplicate. It was only after you edited it that it became a duplicate. So the newer question actually was the first of the two to ask the same question, the older one got edited into a duplicate later. Really, that's pointless, because as Keen linked to, we closer older, poorer duplicates as dupes either way.

Answer 2

I intended to stay out of this whole mess, since I'm not entirely objective, but feel like I should defend @Keen here (not that he needs it), because he clearly did nothing wrong. Specifically, I want to make sure everyone gets the sequence of actions here, and why the "older" question got closed as a dupe of my "newer" one.

1. Sometime yesterday, @SS asked a question, originally titled "How good is Bifrost Bridge in comparison with Star Trek transporters?", which was closed as off-topic (Gorilla vs. Shark).

2. A few minutes later, a user comes along and edits the question to remove the comparison aspect, and the question gets re-opened.

3. @SS then returns and rolls back the edit, back to the original form, and not surprisingly, the question gets closed again.

   At this point, the question had become a point of interest in chat, with several of us expressing the opinion that it's really a good question, if only @SS would let the edits go through. At least one person expressed an interest in writing an answer.

4. Eventually I decided to risk it, and started editing the question to clean it up, and make it clear that Star Trek was being use merely as an example.

5. In the middle of this edit, I get notified that the question had already been edited, specifically, @SS had posted to meta and edited a reference into his question.

6. I took my edited content, saved it to a file, and went to participate in the meta question, hoping he would allow me to make my update and everyone would be happy.

7. The meta question went... a different way. By the end, I had given up on making edits to the original question, largely because of the insults and uncooperativeness being shown by the author.

   At this point, I was genuinely curious what the answer to the question was, because it really was an interesting one. It was just a matter of figuring out how to get it opened and answered. I even considered posting the question myself, after it became clear that the original was a non-start. However, after the furor died down, @SS left a final comment that he would go back and fix his question as we'd been asking, so I left the issue and waited for him to do that.

8. About 5 hours later, after I got home, I checked the original question, and it had not been touched. So, I took the updated content I had written and used it to open a new question.

9. A few hours later, @SS pops in and edits his original question, eliminating the part that we objected to, which puts it into the reopen queue.

By then, @Keen had already seen my question and posted a good answer to it. So yes, at the point that @SS edited his question, he made it into a duplicate of mine, and @Keen correctly closed it as such.

Answer 3

I don't know why I'm even bothering doing this...

Let's look at the sequence of events:

• You posted your original question.
• For better or worse, it was deemed as being off-topic.
• Another user fixed the title of the question in an effort to focus it on what a number of us perceived the intention of the question to be.
• You rolled back the edit.
• The question was closed again.
• You opened a meta question decrying this, calling everyone "robots" and "dick".
• After much talking at you, and you refusing to even acknowledge anyone's points, you made mention that you might edit the question back.
• In chat, Michael mentioned possibly re-posting a new, clear version of the question, as we all felt it a good one, fundamentally.
• You popped into chat and told us that we could edit the question if we wanted to.
• Speaking only for myself, I told you that I had no interest in doing so.
• Hours pass. You have not edited your question, or given any futher indication you intend to.
• Michael Edenfield sees the question has not been edited or re-opened, and chooses to proceed to open a new version of the question.
• Your original question is opened and then closed as a dupe so that it points to the new version.

Which question should have been closed as a dupe?

Yours asks if it can transport without destruction. Michael's takes that and refines it - asking if it can transport from underground - what are its limitations? Is consent involved? Does it pull an unwilling person?

Michael's is a more robust question that would serve to garner a more complete answer.

Based on discussion here, we keep the question that shows more value to the community, and not necessarily the older one. As such, it makes sense that your original question be closed as the duplicate.

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How is the closure reason applicable here?

This is an issue that has been mentioned a handful of times on Meta. The close reason could definitely use tweaking - in part, for reasons you're running into here. The other issue we bump against is that we close questions as dupes when the answers match, even if the questions aren't exactly the same.

But if you want to get that changed, you'll need to bring that up in a separate meta discussion.

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How should you deal with plagiarism?

Remember. You do not own your posts. None. Not any of them.

Everything anyone writes on this site is licensed as Creative Commons - Share Alike

From the TOS

You agree that all Subscriber Content that You contribute to the Network is perpetually and irrevocably licensed to Stack Exchange under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. You grant Stack Exchange the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so in any medium now known or hereinafter developed (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services, even if such Subscriber Content has been contributed and subsequently removed by You.

That said, site etiquette is to treat the OP as the owner, and generally abide by their wishes as far as the content of their posts are concerned. We have had instances where exact copy/pastes have been deleted, but a re-written version of your question is 100% within anyone's rights.