How strictly should the close-as-duplicate rule be enforced?

Question

Here are the reasons why questions are sometimes closed as duplicates. Read this first.

The Stack Exchange rules about duplicate questions were recently relaxed --in a recent post that I can't find-- that linked to this 2010 document.

I just posted this as a comment:

I see that there are two close as duplicate votes on this question. I am not going to interfere if it does get closed, but this seems like a good place to remind everyone that the rules on duplicates were relaxed somewhat. The community's (that's you!) opinions matter more than the moderators. :-)

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Here's the lowdown on To flag, or not to flag, that is the question:

Dr. Strangedupe: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Duplication

As Stack Overflow grows — or any other Q&A; site in the Stack Exchange network, really — there’s a natural pressure to discover and link duplicate questions. The more questions you have, the higher the possibility a given new question isn’t in fact a new question, but a duplicate of an older existing question. Because…

Answer 1

Not as strictly as in years past.

It would be a good idea to review the linked page in the question before you flag a question as a duplicate.

This is not to discourage anyone from flagging questions. There has always been --and will always be-- bona fide reasons for flagging posts as duplicate.