Is the general form of a common question a duplicate of the specific forms?

Question

The situation is the following: there are often questions where the querant is facing a very specific instance of a more general issue. For example:

• Someone wants to know when a colossal creature would be affected by Symbol. Here the general question is how much of a large or larger creature must overlap with a spells area of effect for the creature to be affected.

• Someone wants to know if polymporph cancels bladesong (or rage, or starry form). Here the general question is if polymorph removes only class features, or also ongoing effects caused by such class features.

Sometimes, such questions are then used to close additional, similar questions, because they are a "duplicate" (even though they are asking for a different context of the problem). And it may be more difficult for the querant to accept that their question is a duplicate, given that the other question is talking specifically about another situation.

In all these cases, one could create a general form of the question, and answer the underlying issue cleanly and neutrally, which would also make it easier to refer to it when additional instances of the problem are asked.

This general form would to a large extent have the same logic in its answers as some of the individual questions, but would that make the question itself a duplicate? That is, is it correct to close a question as a duplicate, only because it has the same answer as another question, even though the scope of the question is different?

Answer 1

We try to not deal in general questions

While there can be some utility in general questions, having a specific question is basically always gonna be better. They have clearer scope, can deal with the specifics, and is the actual problem someone is facing.

When we get into dupe closures, an A+X question should be closed as a dupe of B+X only when the equivalence between A and B is clear. If the querent has a reason to think they're different (even when it seems equivalent to us) we should reopen. Because the new question now has a specific, actual thing to address of whether that reason is correct or not, or even relevant. (Please encourage askers of dupes to add any such concerns to their question, should the marked dupe not give a satisfactory answer.)

We do have some very deliberate general questions. Typically to serve as signposts because it's something that comes up a lot and/or the dupe links are getting messy. These serve to reduce repetitions and/or give answers an easy (read here for more) for things that need it. High profile examples: If I multiclass into 2 or more spellcasting classes, how do I determine my known/prepared spells? and What does upper-case-A-Attack action vs. lower-case-a-attack mean?.

These often have the exact same problem with unsatisfactory dupe closures as the otherwise specific questions. Arguably slightly more as a question can be dupe marked even if the general target doesn't (and shouldn't) go into sufficient detail to answer some specific (sub)concern of the closed question. So the above with giving (or highlighting) a specific reason for it to be different applies all the same.

As a final note I'd like to remind that we close questions as dupes of other questions, and that while having the same answer would be an indicator, it is not the arbiter of that. And I'd like to point out that spells and class features include any number of different effects, and a general question would have a hard time covering all of that.