How to decide which question to close as duplicate?

Question

I have two questions here:

• How do I run executable scripts in Nautilus rather than open them in Gedit text editor?

• How do I run executable scripts in Nautilus?

the later of which has been already marked as a duplicate of the former.

I was of the opinion that if two questions are exactly similar, then the question which has been asked later should be marked as the duplicate of the one asked earlier, which is the case presently with these two questions.

However, I had a discussion with one of our fellow users, minerz029, that in this case the question asked later has better answers, more views and more upvotes than the question as earlier.

Does this form a criteria when marking questions as a duplicate? If yes, what all criteria comes into effect when marking a questions as a duplicate of another? If not, is the timing and the nature of the questions the only criteria for marking a question as a duplicate of another?

Answer 1

Mhhhhhh...

March question was made earlier, why would we duplicate the March one with the April one? This makes no sense.

Questions are closed as duplicates when another one exists, votes up do not matter (they should be on the original one anyway since its the original question and quality posts that do exist on the later one can and should be merged to the original.

However, I had a discussion with one of our fellow users, minerz029, that in this case the question asked later has better answers, more views and more upvotes than the question as earlier.

Then you need to fix the tittle. flag for a merge of the answers and stop wasting everyone's times with these discussions. Why are you taking action based on something you discussed with 1 user? This is a bit moronic and sad.