I just closed https://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/51053/global-redirect-and-www-example-com-node as a dupe of Disable node summary page on /node path, and then realised afterwards I'd answered the duplicate question myself.
It strikes me that this might be seen as a conflict of interests.
In the spirit of community involvement, what would the community like mods to do in this situation? Proceed to close as normal, or just flag the question for investigation by another mod?
I don't see a conflict of interest, in this case.
As you already answered the other question, you could have answered the new question, and gained reputation from up-votes. Closing the question as duplicate, and redirecting the users to the question you answered would not probably give you more up-votes than answering the new question. It is quite the opposite: With two answers you have more chances to get up-votes.
Deleting an answer given for a question you answered could be seen more probably as conflict of interest, as it could be interpreted as a way to remove an answer that could get up-votes instead of yours.
For the part of the question of how this might be seen by an average user, as a fairly average user myself, I'd simply think "Clive knew that this question had already been asked because he remembered answering a question like it". It would seem perfectly normal.
Just my point of view naturally, but it seems perfectly natural that people will remember most clearly those questions that they themselves have answered, and therefore that they will be the people most likely to flag up dupes of those questions.
In fact, if the people who had invested time and effort in old questions refrained from flagging up dupes, we'd be reliant on a) people with exceptional memories for questions they'd seen but not interacted with, b) on StackExchange's not-so-reliable search, or c) on google which (hopefully) the asker had already tried. All these are less reliable than people thinking, "That sounds like that question I answered a while ago".
