I just voted to close [this question](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1065671/how-to-approach-an-equation-of-the-form-fx-y-where-f-is-recursively-define) as a duplicate of [this other one](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1060154/help-with-a-recurrence-with-even-and-odd-terms/). However, I am unsure if this was exactly the right action to take, given that, though the latter question has an upvoted answer, that answer is really just an extended comment, in that it does not resolve the question and rather points to a possibly useful identity. To be sure, the latter question has not truly been answered.

*However*, any answer to the latter would certainly be applicable to the former, and even the already existing answer might be of some use - which is why I decided closing would be an appropriate action. Closing doesn't seem like the ideal way to handle such a question, though, since it seems like the purpose of closing as duplicate would be that the asker of the new question could go to the older one and find the answer, and not need to look and further, or check back again later or anything.

Is there possibly a better way to handle this than closing (e.g. is "merging" questions possible)? Would flagging for moderator attention be the right action in this case?