Currently it would lead to cycle of duplicate closures of length 3: 706016 $\to$ 23316 $\to$ 95799 $\to$ 706016
@BillDubuque I think that it would be better to close as a duplicate in the opposite direction (706016 $\to$ 95799 rather than 95799 $\to$ 706016). I think that the post which is the most useful should be left open, as discussed on meta. And this question has more answers and some answers are more detailed. I have also mentioned this in chat. — Martin Sleziak54 secs ago
@MartinSleziak It already went through review queue and the result was leave open.
I am still intrigued what would happen if other users voted to close, but maybe the SE software would prevent it.
Loops should not be possible anymore, I expect that the last close vote would fail. If it doesn't and a loop is actually created, retag this as a bug. — Mad ScientistNov 26 '13 at 20:00
Alright, I've added some protection against this via a neat library that danielrbradley created.
There's sure to be some issues (which we'll log when a block occurs), but the base cases are covered (and unit tested, oh my!).
It looks like this issue has come up before, and been resolved, but it just happened again on Travel.SE. Perhaps this is another corner case? These two questions are closed as duplicates of each other.
I have been refused a visa to ireland and i want to make an appeal
appeal for tourist visa
...
@JyrkiLahtonen I have to admit that it is much easier to write a meta post like the one you're referring to than to apply this in practice to decide whether to close as a duplicate or not.
But since closures are not irreversible, I guess if there are users who disagree with the closure, the question can still be reopened.
@MartinSleziak I agree with the choice of this version as the duplicate target. The principle at work is that the highest voted edition should stay. I will use my supervote to redirect the closures.
As you saw, I have pinged the gold badge holder who voted to close in the opposite directions. (That seemed as a natural thing to do.)
So I guess if he sees some reason why the other one should be preferred, he will menion that in comments or in chat.
@JyrkiLahtonen I would prefer to say most useful rather than highest voted. (Most useful includes factors such as quality of question, quality and number of answers, searchability of the title, etc.)
But certainly number of votes is a good approximation of "question being useful" and in most cases it can be considered a very reliable indicator.
Again, older question is more likely to have answers. (Since it had more time to get them.) But I've seen several instances where this was not the case. The most typical ones is if a question attracted many views and many answers because it appeared in the HNQ list.
But this was discussed a few times on meta and you have certainly seen those discussions.
It looks like this issue has come up before, and been resolved, but it just happened again on Travel.SE. Perhaps this is another corner case? These two questions are closed as duplicates of each other.
I have been refused a visa to ireland and i want to make an appeal
appeal for tourist visa
...
