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I'm sorry for the confusing title, but let's consider the following two questions, which are recently modified on the main site:

(1) Is there any way to get real-time compilation for LaTeX?

  • Asked in 2010
  • 64 upvotes
  • 21519 views (until 06:26 Jan 3, 2019 UTC Time)
  • The accepted answer is posted in 2010 and has received 34 upvotes so far

(2) Real Time LaTeX?

  • Asked in 2008
  • 75 upvotes
  • 41417 views (until 06:26 Jan 3, 2019 UTC Time)
  • The accepted answer is posted in 2009 and has received 34 upvotes so far

Question (2) is marked as a duplicate of Question (1).

But why?

We can see that Question (2) was asked and got the accepted answer before Question (1) did! (2) also has received more views and more upvotes, i.e., (2) is more popular.

If the two questions are a duplicate of each other, I think that Question (1), instead of Question (2), should really be marked as a duplicate.

However, I think they are not a duplicate of each other at all. The accepted answers are not the same, or at least similar, at all, from my point of view.

  • I totally agree with you, the issues are interrelated, but none of them is a duplication of the other. – AndréC Jan 3 at 7:16
  • @AndréC Yes. So I'm wondering why people can mark it as duplicate. – JouleV Jan 3 at 7:43
  • Maybe these markers will come to explain why they did this. – AndréC Jan 3 at 8:02
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    When you compare the posting date, votes and the views each of the posts got, please take into account that the question from 2008 was on stack overflow for the first 4 years and only got migrated to your site afterwards. – user36296 Jan 3 at 8:26
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    I don't think "The accepted answers are not the same" is a good criteria for questions being duplicates or not. There can be a great many ways to achieve the same things. Personally I think it is fine which of the questions is a duplicate of which because the questions tex.stackexchange.com/q/633/36296 is clearer. – user36296 Jan 3 at 8:32
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    Also take into account that tex.stackexchange.com/q/75844/36296 was marked as duplicate immediately after it came to our site, so at that time this was the "new" question while the other was already established and probably already had many upvotes. – user36296 Jan 3 at 8:35
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    When deciding the dupe target, the only that matters is which one is more useful. Date, votes, views, popularity, etc. are not the biggest factors (if, at all). – Andrew T. Jan 3 at 9:22
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    I agree with you that it is odd that the earlier question is marked as a duplicate of a later question. Even though I appreciate the comments by @samcarter, there is unfortunately the additional aspect that, if some question gets closed as a duplicate, it sometimes gets interpreted as the statement that the OP has not searched the site carefully enough to see that this has been already asked before. Clearly, this cannot apply to the earlier post. Yet I do not see an elegant way to resolve this either. – marmot Jan 4 at 18:45

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