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When flagging a question, there are five options in the primary menu, "spam", "rude or abusive", "needs improvement", "a duplicate" and "in need of moderator intervention".

In "needs improvement" secondary menu, there is a option "Duplicate".

So what is the difference between "a duplicate" flag and "needs improvement" -> "Duplicate" flag? If they are identical, why are we having both of them?

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    $\begingroup$ I suspect that this is a kind nudge, designed to reinforce the idea that closing a question as a duplicate may be better than simply closing it. $\endgroup$
    – Xander Henderson Mod
    Apr 26, 2020 at 22:37
  • $\begingroup$ I don't know what the intention of that was (in design), but it is sometimes the case that I review Questions that are a mix of rehashing a previous topic and some difficulty in following the previous Answers. In those cases I'd appreciate clarification by the OP as to what help is needed. For example, they might be put off by the terminology or brevity of previous Answers, or they might be wondering why their own attempts to solve a problem are inadequate (or not!). $\endgroup$
    – hardmath
    Apr 27, 2020 at 0:57

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It is the same. I think it is duplicated (the pun must not be missed) because:

  • they did want to have the "needs improvement" to be the same as the standard "close" dialog (which users with 3000+ points have access to).

  • they wanted "duplicate" separately since it does not really fall under needs improvement, or also to encourage its use.

For users with the close privilege there are even more ways to achieve the same, they can flag (in two ways) and vote to close as duplicate.

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