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I want to bring attention to a situation involving two similar questions about deleting world borders in Minecraft. The first, "How to delete worldborders in Minecraft?", was asked in 2017. The second, "How to remove the world border in Minecraft?", is from 2024.

Recently, some users voted to close the 2017 question as a duplicate of the 2024 one. However, I have reservations about this approach. The older question has significantly more visibility with 28K views, compared to just ~600 for the newer one. This means users are much more likely to stumble upon the 2017 question in their searches. Moreover, being 7 years older, it has accumulated more highly upvoted answers.

When I raised these points, aytimothy, the close vote initiator, countered that the most upvoted answer on the 2017 question doesn't actually provide a method to delete the world border. They argued that the 2024 question has a more "correct" answer, essentially stating that you can't or shouldn't delete the world border.

In light of this, I flagged for a merge. However, I then noticed a comment from the OP of the 2024 question. They claimed their question is distinct because none of the answers on the 2017 post fit their specific criteria, suggesting these might not be duplicates after all. So I retracted my flag.

This situation leaves us at a crossroads, and I'm seeking input on how to proceed. Should we close one as a duplicate, and if so, which one? If we merge them, which should be the target? Or given the claim that they're not duplicates, should we simply leave both questions as they are?

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    Hello, thanks for writing this up. I think there's a bit of technicality that I may have not put an emphasis on in my 2024 question. I'll make the technical requirement more clear. it has to do with "All blocks should be accessible in survival at all times.", which is a veiled multiplayer requirement. I've added this to the question. It doesn't change any of the existing answer that are on it currently.
    – tuskiomi
    Commented Oct 17 at 15:03
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    I thought about merging these questions, with the 2024 question being the merge target, but I wasn't sure if the answers from the 2017 post would be correct if they were merged onto the 2024 post.
    – Timmy Jim Mod
    Commented Oct 17 at 17:20
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    I VTC the 2017 also because it has a wrong accepted answer, so there's no need to point other questions to that.
    – pinckerman
    Commented Oct 18 at 20:32
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    Related: Is a question a duplicate just because it asks for something that can be part of another question's answer?
    – galacticninja
    Commented Oct 20 at 0:54

4 Answers 4

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Close the 2017 question as unclear

On second thought it's very vague about what it means. The accepted answer answers something completely different than my interpretation of the question and is heavily downvoted by the community. That means the author has completely failed to articulate their question in a way anyone else understood, and it's not useful.

I prefer closing it as duplicate, just because "look here" is a better pointer to give to someone who stumbles across the 2017 question than "this question is useless", but that conceptual argument isn't quite how StackExchange is meant to work.

I'm posting this as a separate answer so the community can vote on the idea separately.

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  • Are the two non-accepted answers valid (or were they back in 2017?) I don't think that question is unclear - the OP was pretty concise on what they wanted to know.
    – Timmy Jim Mod
    Commented Oct 22 at 20:00
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    Assuming you don't use mods, then both of those answers state correct facts about how Minecraft works as of the time they were written, and those facts are still correct today AFAIK. (I haven't kept very close watch on recent Minecraft versions so it's possible something changes, but not likely). The reason the question is unclear is that I can't tell whether those facts really answer the question - the accepted answer does not delete the world border, and neither do they really, so the fact they accepted the answer they did means we have no idea what they actually wanted.
    – pppery
    Commented Oct 23 at 3:52
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It's worth noting that they are, in fact, separate questions. The 2024 question asks for mods that remove the world border, where the 2017 question is less specific and only has vanilla answers. I think it's worth keeping both but making that distinction clear.

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  • Well, the OP of the second question specifies they're fine with mods, which is different (the first one might have been as well).
    – Joachim
    Commented Oct 18 at 13:25
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    The 2017 question is completely silent on whether mods are allowed. This is reading a distinction that just isn't there.
    – pppery
    Commented Oct 19 at 3:13
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Close the 2017 question as a duplicate of the 2024 question without merging.

The answers in the 2017 question are downright wrong in either context. The accepted answer is seriously misleading, and the other two answers either say that or "this is impossible", with a guess as to what is meant, and would be of no real value on the 2024 question.

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Don't close as a duplicate nor merge

The 2024 question is distinct from the 2017 question and shouldn't be closed as a duplicate or merged.

According to tuskiomi, the OP of the 2024 question, their post has specific criteria that set it apart from the 2017 question:

If you look at the accepted answer for the linked [2017] question, you will see that none of the answers, including the accepted answer fit the criteria listed in my short description. That is enough on the face for a sufficient distinction.

They further clarified:

I think there's a bit of technicality that I may have not put an emphasis on in my 2024 question. I'll make the technical requirement more clear. it has to do with "All blocks should be accessible in survival at all times.", which is a veiled multiplayer requirement. I've added this to the question. It doesn't change any of the existing answer that are on it currently.

This aligns with a previous meta discussion: Is a question a duplicate just because it asks for something that can be part of another question's answer? That discussion concluded that more specific questions shouldn't be considered duplicates of broader ones, even if their answers could overlap. Since the 2024 question is more specific, it shouldn't be considered a duplicate nor merged with the more general 2017 question.

Regarding the issue of the wrong accepted answer on the 2017 question, we don't close questions because the OP accepted an incorrect answer. This should be treated like any other wrong answer: downvote it, leave a comment explaining why it's incorrect, and add the correct answer if it hasn't been provided already.

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