I have a dupehammer for python - If I dupe hammer something I normally leave a comment with a TL;DR of the dupe because I know that most 1rep question posters do not take the time to read the dupe / would not understand it immediately.

They still should read it to learn from it, but that's what I would do.

1. Is this a good theory for the reasons some questions get closed as duplicates?
2. Is it helpful to the site to close questions under this reasoning? My feeling is "yes", but it's useful to see arguments both for and against it.

Yes

3. If your answer to #2 was "yes", what can be done to make it more clear to people that "exact duplicate" can refer to cases like these?

There are quite a few mistakes/problems that python novices make:

• mixed indentation
• Why does my recursive function return None
• How to get input and validate it
• My lists of list changes if I change one list inside it
• nested list comprehension
• group list of objects by attribute of object
• ...

etc. - all these have good canonical dupes.

Sometimes there is a "my list of dicts changes all dicts if I add something to one of them" which could be such a P/Q situation - the reason is the same as for the canonical for lists - but the first reaction is:

NO - I use lists not dicts, thats not a dupe at all. If the dupe needs "thinking" it might need a slightly bigger comment to make it plausible.

4. When closing duplicates under this reasoning, is it useful to help explain to the OP how their question relates to the duplicate question?

Yes. Most of the time.

Sometimes the question is more of a (P1,P2,P3,P4) problem (the OP might not even recognize that P2-P4 exist) in which case I might add 2-3 dupetargets and explain which one would solves what part of the problem and ask for the future to only ask specific problem. If not all problems can be dupes, I suggest creating a new questions with that specific problem if it can not be solved...

I have a dupehammer for python - if I dupe hammer something I normally leave a comment with a TL;DR of the dupe, because I know that most 1-rep question posters do not take the time to read the dupe / would not understand it immediately.

They still should read it to learn from it, but that's what I would do.

1. Is this a good theory for the reasons some questions get closed as duplicates?
2. Is it helpful to the site to close questions under this reasoning? My feeling is "yes", but it's useful to see arguments both for and against it.

Yes

3. If your answer to #2 was "yes", what can be done to make it more clear to people that "exact duplicate" can refer to cases like these?

There are quite a few mistakes/problems that Python novices make:

• mixed indentation
• Why does my recursive function return None?
• How to get input and validate it
• My lists of list changes if I change one list inside it
• nested list comprehension
• group list of objects by attribute of object
• ...

etc. - all these have good canonical dupes.

Sometimes there is a "my list of dicts changes all dicts if I add something to one of them" which could be such a P/Q situation - the reason is the same as for the canonical for lists - but the first reaction is:

NO - I use lists, not dicts, that's not a dupe at all. If the dupe needs "thinking" it might need a slightly bigger comment to make it plausible.

4. When closing duplicates under this reasoning, is it useful to help explain to the OP how their question relates to the duplicate question?

Yes. Most of the time.

Sometimes the question is more of a (P1, P2, P3, P4) problem (the OP might not even recognize that P2-P4 exist) in which case I might add 2-3 dupetargets and explain which one would solves what part of the problem and ask for the future to only ask specific problem. If not all problems can be dupes, I suggest creating a new questions with that specific problem if it can not be solved...

I have a dupehammer for python - If I dupe hammer something I normally leave a comment with a TL;DR of the dupe because I know that most 1rep question posters do not take the time to read the dupe / would not understand it immediately.

They still should read it to learn from it, but that's what I would do.

1. Is this a good theory for the reasons some questions get closed as duplicates?
2. Is it helpful to the site to close questions under this reasoning? My feeling is "yes", but it's useful to see arguments both for and against it.

Yes

3. If your answer to #2 was "yes", what can be done to make it more clear to people that "exact duplicate" can refer to cases like these?

There are quite a few mistakes/problems that python novices make:

• mixed indentation
• Why does my recursive function return None
• How to get input and validate it
• My lists of list changes if I change one list inside it
• nested list comnprehension
• group list of objects by attribute of object

etc. - all these have good canonical dupes.

Sometimes there is a "my list of dicts changes all dicts if I add something to one of them" which could be such a P/Q situation - the reason is the same as for the canonical for lists - but the first reaction is:

NO - I use lists not dicts, thats not a dupe at all. If the dupe needs "thinking" it might need a slightly bigger comment to make it plausible.

4. When closing duplicates under this reasoning, is it useful to help explain to the OP how their question relates to the duplicate question?

Yes. Most of the time.

Sometimes the question is more of a (P1,P2,P3,P4) problem (the OP might not even recognize that P2-P4 exist) in which case I might add 2-3 dupetargets and explain which one would solves what part of the problem and ask for the future to only ask specific problem. If not all problems can be dupes, I suggest creating a new questions with that specific problem if it can not be solved...

I have a dupehammer for python - If I dupe hammer something I normally leave a comment with a TL;DR of the dupe because I know that most 1rep question posters do not take the time to read the dupe / would not understand it immediately.

They still should read it to learn from it, but that's what I would do.

1. Is this a good theory for the reasons some questions get closed as duplicates?
2. Is it helpful to the site to close questions under this reasoning? My feeling is "yes", but it's useful to see arguments both for and against it.

Yes

3. If your answer to #2 was "yes", what can be done to make it more clear to people that "exact duplicate" can refer to cases like these?

There are quite a few mistakes/problems that python novices make:

• mixed indentation
• Why does my recursive function return None
• How to get input and validate it
• My lists of list changes if I change one list inside it
• nested list comprehension
• group list of objects by attribute of object
• ...

etc. - all these have good canonical dupes.

Sometimes there is a "my list of dicts changes all dicts if I add something to one of them" which could be such a P/Q situation - the reason is the same as for the canonical for lists - but the first reaction is:

NO - I use lists not dicts, thats not a dupe at all. If the dupe needs "thinking" it might need a slightly bigger comment to make it plausible.

4. When closing duplicates under this reasoning, is it useful to help explain to the OP how their question relates to the duplicate question?

Yes. Most of the time.

Sometimes the question is more of a (P1,P2,P3,P4) problem (the OP might not even recognize that P2-P4 exist) in which case I might add 2-3 dupetargets and explain which one would solves what part of the problem and ask for the future to only ask specific problem. If not all problems can be dupes, I suggest creating a new questions with that specific problem if it can not be solved...