I asked Please update the Google Prettify syntax-highlighting library in July 2018. Since action was requested of SE Inc. and they did not respond, the question essentially died.
All of a sudden today, the above question was closed as a duplicate of How does the highlight.js change affect Stack Overflow specifically? which was asked (well, announced) in September 2020.
- My question is not and cannot be a duplicate of the supposed target. While they are related, and the end goal is the same, the content of these questions is very obviously different. It's essentially the same as closing a question about a feature in an early version of a particular software framework, as a dupe of a question about that feature in a later version.
- My question was asked more than two years before the target was created; if anything the target should be closed as a dupe of my question...
- A comment I left on my question after the dupe target was suggested, disputing the target as being a dupe, was deleted without any explanation. This can only have occurred via moderator intervention.
I don't particularly care about my question being closed, but I believe that closing it as a duplicate is both semantically incorrect as well as wholly unnecessary. The standard for Meta questions that don't get answers is to leave them alone to die; what is the difference here? And why did a moderator feel it necessary to step in to remove a comment disputing the dupe?