How did this circular-referencing duplicate question happen?

Question

I found these two questions: https://askubuntu.com/question

• need initfamfs modules. 15.04
• where do i add modules to initramfs? 15.04

They are both marked as duplicate, and they both reference the other question as the linked question that is supposedly duplicated.

Obviously one of them has to be the original, right? Can this be fixed? Or is there a third unlinked question and answer I'm missing?

Perhaps this isn't a bug, but it sure feels like one from a user standpoint. I wouldn't think proper design should allow closing a question by marking it as a duplicate of another question that is already marked as a duplicate. I spent far longer than I care to admit following the breadcrumb trail until I realized it was the same two questions.

Answer 1

The way this happened in the past was that

• question a and question b got various votes as duplicates of each other.
• question a is closed as a duplicate of b
• question b is closed for some non-duplicate reason
• the majority votes on b are for duplication and the majority action counts

This edge case was solved by the stack developers writing code that clears the duplication votes on b when a is closed as a duplicate of b but historical closures still exist.

Answer 2

I can confirm that this should no longer happen. I just reopened one of the two and then tried to close it again. For science. I got:

So this shouldn't be possible anymore. In any case, thanks for bringing it up, I have now merged the two questions into one.