This is a followup on my previous meta question.
This (my) question has been marked as a duplicate and closed: "This question has been asked before and already has an answer." And of course, a different question was linked. Which is essentially is fine by itself.
My "problem" is, that the liked question/answer does not answer my question. I wanted to know HOW I can activate WinXP not IF MS will allow a future activation in general. I found a solution but I would very much like to know if there are other once, besides the ones that were posted. This is no longer possible for this question since it's closed. (Re)Reading through the help center about the reasons to use the duplicate/close tags I thought I understand them, they not applied correctly (which, granted, is doubtful but still a possibility). So whats the way to go in order to "solve my problem"?
1) I could argue the case that the questions might be similar but they are not asking about the same thing:
my question is much more specific: First The linked question actually consists of two independent topics (which would be better asked as two separate questions). Secondly, the linked question is very general it doesn't ask how to solve a problem only asks if there will be a problem. Thirdly, I'm looking for (all sorts of) methods to activate WinXP offline (for several reasons)
the context/circumstances changed. 5 years ago you could still use the phone number that was supplied within the activation dialogue or use the online activation. This is no longer the case. The German phone number doesn't work anymore and a lot of users seem to have trouble (as I have) to use the online activation (which in itself poses a problem since you don't want to connect an insecure OS to the internet).
2) If the questions are similar and there is no way of editing mine in order to differentiate it enough. I could raise the point if it makes sense to mark the linked question as a duplicate and not mine. First of all the linked question does not provide an answer to my question (solutions offline activation for Windows in 2019), secondly, the linked question has much lower activity, it doesn't have an accepted answer etc. It's "only" older, and as far as I remember correctly, the date of the question is not the relevant criteria (although I'm not sure where I read that).
Essentially I have two questions:
A) What would be the best approach here (1 or 2)? If I need to, how should I rephrase the question that emphasizes the difference? Should I just add that I'm specifically looking for an offline solution including any "unofficial" workarounds? Would that be enough?
B) What is the reason behind the "rule" of closing duplicate questions (how exactly does it benefit the site) and how do they apply in this case? Is there something I completely missed here?
I would be grateful for some advice and or explanation. I hope it's clear that my main goal is not a certain outcome but to get a better understand the procedures (or the general accepted way of doing things). And that I'm using my WinXP question as a working example so this is not just a hypothetical meta question.
