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First off, I'll provide the details of both questions so you don't have to keep switching tabs to look at them.
The two questions in question are Is a Pokémon's weight and height relevant? posted July 6th and I've got an “XS” or “XL” Pokémon. Is it special? posted July 7th. Both have close votes to close one of the questions as a duplicate to the other. The first has now been closed as a duplicate of the 2nd, and the second had 2 votes. The later also has 3 questions (1,2,3) marked as duplicates of it.

As for the actual questions here is question 1,

Does a Pokémon's weight and height influence their CP?

Or are the differences between Pokémon weight/height purely cosmetic, i.e. "just for fun"?

and question 2,

Whilst checking my Pokémon, I saw one Pidgey with very small CP value in comparison to his brethren. I noticed his weight is smaller, and he has an "XS" mark (see the screenshot).

Is this special? Can I do something with it? Is it more valuable?

At first glance, they do not appear to be duplicates as one is asking about weight and height, and the other is asking specifically about XS/XL tags on a Pokémon. However, the XL/XS tags are related to the height and weight, so it could be argued that they are both asking about the same mechanic.

There are several things we could do, and I would like a consensus on which is the best; here are the 4 I can think of and possible reasons.

  1. Leave them both open (i.e. they are different enough of questions so we leave them both open.)
  2. Keep question 1 as duplicate to the second. (several related questions are already closed as a duplicate of 2 and they are asking about the same thing.)
  3. Close question 2 as a duplicate of the first instead. (question 1 is more broad and they are asking the same thing. though we would have to change the duplicate targets of the other questions to also be 1 instead of 2 to avoid dup chains).
  4. Merge the two questions. (they are both asking the same thing, and are both highly voted with multiple upvoted answers. NOTE: I have no idea how merging works, so this may be much more complicated than I am making it seem.)

TLDR: What should we do with these two questions?

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  • @Timelord64 at this point I can sort of see all sides to closing/reopening/merging and I'm not actually sure what to do with it, so I figured more brains + more knowledge + more experience would be a good thing in figuring this headache out. Also, if anyone knows where merging is explained, could they direct me there? I don't really know when that happens, or why, just that only mods can do it afaik.
    – Dragonrage Mod
    Jul 13, 2016 at 5:57
  • Hmm, I'm torn. on the one hand, the XS/XL marking do fall under the same size mechanics. On the other the markings are worth mentioning in the question because they certainly catch the eye and are more likely to be searched for. Jul 13, 2016 at 5:57
  • If I can do anything to fix the problem, please let me know. Actually, I don't even understand why my question should be classified as duplicate: it is more general and it was asked before the other (@Mathias711 should have checked before asking).
    – alextoind
    Jul 13, 2016 at 9:01

1 Answer 1

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TL;DR: We should revert the "XS/XL" question, reopen the "height/size" question, and point all relevant questions to the later.

The original question on the current "original" was never intended to ask about the impact of size in Pokemon. At least, not in the way that all the duplicates do. The original question was "I've got an 'XS' Pokemon. Is it special?". I interpreted the question to mean "what is particularly special about having an XS Pokemon", and posted an answer: Nothing much. There is a related badge for catching XS Rattata. This answer was accepted, and the question seemed complete.

However, it was later pointed out that we had a lot of questions asking about the implications of height and size. One particular user suggested we change the "XS" question to instead ask about height and size, and point all future questions back to it. I was personally against it, but the original asker was not, and changed the question to reflect all sizes.

As it stands, I still have the accepted answer. I am still hesitant to say we even have an answer with the "height/size" answer, given that the two voted on answers are highly disputed contradictions of each other. But ultimately, the accepted answer of the "XS/XL" question offers no help to users wanting to know more about the actual impact of having different sizes.

Ultimately, more research should have been done, before changing the question to be a "canonical question". That said, we now have six questions linked to it. I do not know how difficult it is to change the redirection for a duplicate question, and agree it would be very helpful if any mod could give us any sort of input on the ease of changing duplicate links and/or merging. All that aside,

I think we should revert the "XS/XL" question, reopen the "size/height" question, and use the later as the original. As it stands, the "XS/XL" question offers absolutely no help what so ever to users wanting to know the actual implications. If they were redirected to "size,height", at the present, they would at least be met with sound argument on two different theories. With more work, I'm sure we will also find the right answer. But it probably will not happen with the question closed.

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