While trying to close a question about a common misconception, I initially found a dupe target at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16043207 - call this question A.
After some more effort, I found a much better target: How is returning the output of a function different from printing it? - call this question B. I replaced my link in the original question, to point at B instead.
Normally, I would try to contribute to the general site cleanup effort, by a) closing A as a duplicate of B (since I have a relevant dupe-hammer), and b) possibly voting to delete it - to avoid it cluttering the results, and hopefully make it a tiny bit more likely that B will come up instead. (It didn't for me, despite the upvotes on the question, and despite the fact that I was searching for a few keywords that are all in that question's title after stemming).
However, it turns out that A was already closed at the time (under an older set of closure reasons). I cannot re-close it as a duplicate, and I am warned about voting to delete it because of the upvoted answers - even after fixing other questions to use B as a dupe-target instead.
How should I handle this situation?
For those finding this question later: the canonical duplicate, as of this edit, is in fact a separate question C: What is the purpose of the return statement? How is it different from printing?. A was deleted, and B became a duplicate of C. I have been busying myself with redirecting some duplicates - there are a lot, and there are a few other related questions that should get used for other stuff.
