This question is motivated by the following three questions:
- (A) Lawyer sacrifices life for his activist friend by taking his place in prison
- (B) Can't remember book title: a journalist converses with a death row convict
- (C) What is this famous ending of a poem/speech?
Question A is the oldest, with a detailed description and a confirmed answer. Question B has a similar description to A, although less detailed, and the same answer has been suggested but not confirmed. Question C has a confirmed answer which is the same as A, but the description is totally different, with different details of the same book being remembered.
Currently, question B has three votes to close it as a duplicate of A, while question C has none. This inspired me to post a meta and start a general (i.e. not just about these particular questions!) discussion about closing identification questions as duplicates.
Should we create a clear policy on when to close ID questions as duplicates?
For the record, so far we have four questions with the identification-request tag that are closed as duplicates:
Book about a boy surviving in a forest with animal friends Answer given but not confirmed; dupe target has an accepted answer. Both questions have similar descriptions.
Trilogy of books involving a man's journey through ritual magic Question was inspired by the dupe target; the OP of the duplicate answered both questions after realising they were about the same story, and closed his own question himself.
Book about a boy who leaves his village and goes to a large city. The cover shows two men having a discussion at the foot of Bruegel's Tower of Babel The OP posted the same question on two different SE sites; the SFF version was migrated here and closed as a duplicate of the original Lit version.
Short story about a young boy living in South Africa during Apartheid Answer given but not confirmed; dupe target (which is actually newer) has an accepted answer. Both questions have similar descriptions and the answers seem clearly correct.