Why on Earth was a feature request flagged as a duplicate of a support question?

Question

Someone on Meta Stack Overflow just asked this question: Make the error "This edit would have to be a suggested edit" more verbose

Which was just flagged as a possible duplicate of this question: Uninformative (and Confusing) Error Message for Suggested Edit Conflict

Which was flagged and marked as a duplicate of this question: "This edit would have to be a suggested edit" / edit button grayed out

Which is linked in the first question. My question, why on Earth was a feature request flagged as a duplicate of a support question when the best answer to the support question is "I dunno it could probably be less cryptic" ([SIC]Yes, that error message could have been less cryptic.) and both the first and second links are asking that this be changed?

The third link asks "Why is this happening?" and an answer was posted, but obviously it wasn't changed. Why are feature requests asking that it be changed being flagged and marked as duplicates when that question is answered and no resolution will come of it as it isn't a feature request? Instead, the second question only garnered flags and nonconstructive comments.

Edit: I was a bit harsh on the maturity of the language, but the question still stands. To clarify the question is:

• Should this be in writing as a feature request (a la questions 1 & 2).
• Should this be closed as dupe when there's a difference between "Why is this happening?" and "Can we please change this?".

and

• Is there a discernable difference between "Why is this happening?" and "Can we please change this?" that disqualifies it from closure as a dupe?

Answer 1

Anybody with sufficient priveleges can vote to close a question as a duplicate, but it takes 4 people agreeing with them (or 5 if it's a flag, or 1 mod in rare cases) to actually close it.

If you disagree, express that in the comments or clarify your question to explain why previous posts have not fully addressed the issue/question.

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So for this particular post, my answer is a bit different (in case you haven't noticed my comments). The primary post in question is clearly a duplicate of the second, but the second is, in my opinion, not a duplicate of the third.

Answer 2

Is there a discernable difference between "Why is this happening?" and "Can we please change this?" that disqualifies it from closure as a dupe?

Well if you search for Bug Vs Feature request the very first result is a Coding Horror Article "That's Not a Bug, It's a Feature Request" The ending of which leads me believe that no, there is no discernible difference and the last thing anyone should be doing is arguing over what's a bug and what's a feature request.

One of my favorite things about UserVoice -- which we use for Stack Overflow -- is the way it intentionally blurs the line between bugs and feature requests. Users never understand the difference anyway, and what's worse, developers tend to use that division as a wedge against users. Nudge things you don't want to do into that "feature request" bucket, and proceed to ignore them forever. Argue strongly and loudly enough that something reported as a "bug" clearly isn't, and you may not have to to do any work to fix it. Stop dividing the world into Bugs and Feature Requests, and both of these project pathologies go away.

I wish we could, as an industry, spend less time fighting tooth and nail over definitions, painstakingly placing feedback in the "bug" or "feature request" buckets -- and more time doing something constructive with our users' feedback.