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The following 3 questions:

Were all closed as duplicates of:

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/25/what-are-the-best-ways-to-avoid-data-roaming-fees-when-travelling-abroad

Now I'm not necessarily saying that those questions shouldn't have been closed, just that they were not duplicates. Roaming is not the same as data roaming - it also refers to calls.

General StackExchange policy on duplicates is described in a StackExchange blog post: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/11/dr-strangedupe-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-duplication/:

One thing I want to be clear about, though, is that duplication is not necessarily bad. Quite the contrary — some duplication is desirable. There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds people can find the answer they’re looking for. And isn’t that, really, the whole point of this exercise?

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Remember that a duplicate answer is not the same as a duplicate question.

Close duplicate QUESTIONS. Don't close a question that *happens to have the same answer as another question."

As a purely hypothetical example,

"How can I save money on mobile data in Italy"

and

"What is the cheapest way to get phone bandwidth in Rome"

are NOT the same question... they might have the same ANSWER but they are different questions. We want to keep both questions around in inventory because some people will look for "mobile data Italy" on google while others will look for "cheap bandwidth Rome" and we want to have an answer for both of them.

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This may perhaps be true for, say, StackOverflow where a variant of a question may be legitimately different enough to warrant an answer that's slightly different. I feel especially in this case of SIM card questions we often find on Travel.SE that the answer is often the same. (Which basically is: there's no 'common' mobile operator in Europe.)

My personal opinion. I'd love to hear what others think on this issue.

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    One talks about Internet only, while the other's are talking about phone calls and possibly Internet too. As I said, perhaps they should be closed, but not for being duplicates of the question they were closed for
    – Casebash
    Commented Mar 27, 2012 at 12:30

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