Sometimes they aren't even close to having the same meaning, and are rejected. +5

It depends on who is moderating. I have had some rejected that are dupes and then some that are not even close are accepted as dupes. So honestly both.

I`ve had duplicate questions.They do not have to be word for word.Just close.

This can be such a frustrating moderation subject. I once had a duplicate question rejected because it wasn't an EXACT duplicate...but the question was one of several EXACT duplicates posted by the SAME person. In fact, it looked like a glitch because there were about a half dozen identical questions posted at the exact same time in the same catagory. And EVERY OTHER QUESTION I had flagged as "Duplicate" was accepted. So go figure. Needless to say, I did a little feedback and emailing on that one. A couple weeks ago I had an obvious duplicate, which wasn't exactly the same, word for word. Under the "Who would win?" catagory was "Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal?. I flagged it as a dupe of an older one in the SAME catagory which said "Who would win? Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal?" And it was rejected because it wasn't an exact duplicate. Needless to say, I fed this one back as well because it was an insane rejection. The bottom line is that duplicates do NOT have to be EXACT word-for-word duplicates. But personally, I usually only flag exact dupes because I don't want to deal with the stupid rejections. But sometimes, when it's TOTALLY obvious it's a dupe, I'll flag it even if it's not exact. (Like the Chuck Norris/Steven Seagal thing). Here is my guidance for this: If the INTENT of the question is identical, then flag it as a dupe. But you have to be careful: Sometimes a person is really asking something from a slightly different angle. For example, "Who would win, Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal?" is NOT the same as "Who would win, Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal from their early movie careers?" The second one stipulates a battle between the two as they were known early in their movie careers, and the other one doesn't.