Lately, I've been seeing some pretty liberal definitions of "exact duplicate" in some people closing SO questions. If I recall correctly, Jeff had intended to make it so that there were loose rules on closing duplicate questions. So I had always assumed that an exact duplicate was meant to be... well... an exact duplicate. So that if someone were to accidentally double-post a question, the second one would be closed.
Extremely similar topics should be posted in the thread itself. If I wanted to be berated for not utilizing search better, I'd go post on usenet. Now I realize that people who close threads don't mean to berate people. But it's difficult not to take offense at having a thread closed as a duplicate, and I feel that this may chase newbies away.
What is your interpretation of "exact duplicate?"