Recent Yu-Gi-Oh questions reaction - seems overcritical

Question

I'm surprised, and a bit concerned, at the reaction given to two recent questions with the yu-gi-oh tag:

1. Can I go down to half-a-life-point?
2. How does Keeper of the Shrine work?

I find it unwelcoming, a bit heavy-handed, and not consistent with the stack's reaction to similar questions on other games.

The first was closed as duplicate to Halving points in Yu-Gi-Oh, but:

• That question asked how paying half your life when at an odd number worked. Yes, you can work out from there (as the comment from a closer did) that 1 - (1 / 2 = 0.5, rounded up to 1) = 0, but neither the question itself, nor the answer, considered specifically the 1-life case. [EDIT by OP: This paragraph is in fact wrong. It is 1LP - 1/2 = 0.5 rounded up to 1LP. Which does, in fact, change the case significantly. But note that a very experienced game player - world-known for his referee-skill in one game, suggested to train for Judge in another, plays (by himself, badly) YGO - read the "duplicate" answer three times - and the so-called "obvious answer" comment, and read it backwards. Interesting that. See conclusion.]
• Because it didn't consider that case, it didn't give an answer to "can you do this, even if you will then go to 0 LP?" Which I'm sure has an answer, is definitely relevant to the closed question, while being not relevant to the "duplicate" question. Which, to me, is sufficient difference to not be a duplicate. [EDIT: this is still an interesting question, but not relevant to the interaction, because of misreading above.]
• There are many questions on this stack and others that are "specific interactions of general cases previously asked" that are considered valid and useful questions.
• M:tG tag in particular has many questions that are much closer to being duplicates than this, that get kept open and given answers, because they are different enough that people might not automatically get from "here" to "there". One of recent note even claimed to be a duplicate in the question - it specifically stated "I've read the explanation and I don't get it [therefore please answer it again/here's what I didn't get]".
• I think this question could very easily, relevantly, and helpfully be answered with the comment DarkCygnus gave (and a small note about whether doing this is even legal, and whether there is a timeframe before one loses because of 0 LP that one can get out of it/cards that would allow you to win/keep playing at 0 LP). [EDIT: I still think this would be an excellent answer - not only "you can do this, but here's what actually happens, it ends up costing you no life at all! That's an interesting issue in the rules, and could also be used..."]

The second isn't closed, but was downvoted - and the comment is effectively "you don't know the rules. X is not Y." Which is totally true (if a bit brutal), but how many "a triggered ability is not an activated ability is not a spell is not a loyalty ability is not a creature is not a creature card" questions do we have on this stack? Many of which are considered good questions and are happily answered - again - perhaps with a link to a general/canonical question or the CR section.

Again, the comment could be straight up a valid, useful answer to the question (with some additional explanation, and perhaps quoting of some relevant rules). The question is definitely as valid as How does Clarion Spirit work? (yes, that's not the title, but it might as well be).

One could argue that we should come down as hard on M:tG "duplicates" and "don't understand the basic rules" as has happened with these YGO questions. I would prefer that we go the other way - especially if we want to encourage this stack to be more than "M:tG CR Q&A" and "Identify this game".

Therefore, I shall cast a vote to re-open the closed question, and have upvoted both questions (they may have not shown any research effort, but they are both clear and useful). I ask that the community consider where we wish to put the line on these, and watch to see if the line is different for some games than others. We certainly need to promote good questions and limit duplicates; but we also need to promote "questions", straight up - especially from "New contributors", with whom we are asked to "Take care in asking for clarification, commenting, and answering."

To clarify my question, which seems to have been misread as "complaining about two specific cases, both of which were read wrong/had potentially flaggable comments" (note that my concern was with the reaction, not from the correctness of the questions or the responses thereto:

Do we want to be the "IOTTMCO with basic searching, close"/"RTFM" stack, or the "Yes, it works, and it's an interesting usecase of [this general question] why it works"/"Tribute Summons are not the same as Special Summons. So it doesn't work that way..." stack?

Answer 1

There are a variety of factors here, and some of them might be actionable.

First, it's important to recognize that duplicate closure is not intended to be a punishment or anything like that. Closing a question as a duplicate should show the question author and any later visitor who has the same question where the answer to their question can be found. Ideally, it should only be used when the linked question and its answers clearly and completely answer the closed question.

In reality, it is not that simple, because question closure is determined by vote, and the voters are making a judgement call based on subjective criteria. People don't all agree on the general threshold of how close questions have to be to be duplicates, and on how close individual questions actually are. And because users tend to focus on specific games, we end up with separate pools of potential close voters for different games, which can result in different trends in duplicate question closure for different games.

Regarding Magic: The Gathering, I think it is true that we close questions as duplicates less than the rest of the site, and maybe less than we should. There is definitely a strong case that this question that you linked should be closed as a duplicate, and the other question's answers should be expanded and clarified to address it. Part of the problem is that a lot of questions describe interactions by card names, which both makes them unsuitable duplicate targets, and makes it difficult to search for duplicates. There are also a lot of subtly different interactions, which makes it harder to find exact duplicate targets. Occasionally we have created large "canonical" questions that aggregate information otherwise covered in many separate questions, and then close the others as duplicates.

Regarding the other question, I agree that we were not very welcoming, but I think that issue is not as specific to one game vs another. For example, this recent MTG question, also by a new user, has a similar issue, and had a similar reception. It would be better for us to more effectively discourage answers in comments.