Closing actual dupes? yes. Closing as "dupe" questions that sound similar to other questions, that's a massive bug, and happens if "close all dupes" is a major goal for people, over "ensure I understand the question and the question I think it's a a dupe of" (which can be quite hard and specific!), the overall context (yes, the question was answered in 2009 with "use jQuery". No, that's not the answer in 2024, but there is no process to "re-open" a question where the state of the art has changed), ...
the overall context (yes, the question was
answered in 2009 with "use jQuery". No, that's
not the answer in 2024
This is the crux of SO's problem. At scale, it's just an impossible task for the moderators to parse out this sort of context since the problem space (the number of potential dupes) is massive and getting larger every day.
At a minimum, for that problem to be overcome, IMO there would need to be a lot of metadata associated with each question so that moderators could make faster and more accurate judgement calls regarding the question of, "is question A a dupe of question B? are question B's answers still relevant?"
This seems like an issue where LLMs could actually be of some assistance. In my experience ChatGPT has been pretty good about understanding that sort of change over time and which solutions are deprecated. I wouldn't want LLMs making the decisions outright, but I could see them being a valuable assist for human moderators.
> but there is no process to "re-open" a question where the state of the art has changed)
Of course there is. When you get closing privileges you also get re-open privileges. And, believe it or not, people do reopen questions when it's appropriate.
Closing actual dupes? yes. Closing as "dupe" questions that sound similar to other questions, that's a massive bug, and happens if "close all dupes" is a major goal for people, over "ensure I understand the question and the question I think it's a a dupe of" (which can be quite hard and specific!), the overall context (yes, the question was answered in 2009 with "use jQuery". No, that's not the answer in 2024, but there is no process to "re-open" a question where the state of the art has changed), ...