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The question about the historical usage of men to refer to human beings generally was closed as off-topic. It seems to fall under usage and perhaps even etymology, two of the listed acceptable topics.

However, the question is obviously duplicative of Can "man" always be used to mean both men and women?. I've seen questions closed as duplicates that were (in my view) considerably different in substance from their identified duplicates, so this one could have been trivially closed as duplicative. Why was it instead closed as off-topic?

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    I don't know if you can see the detailed close reason (probably not; I think that's a reputation-based privilege) but it's "Please include the research you’ve done, or consider if your question suits our English Language Learners site better. Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic." In fact four votes were for that standard reason and the other voted for simple migration to ELL. I can't explain why people voted to close though, which is why this comment simply provides some detail.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Apr 10, 2021 at 7:56
  • @AndrewLeach I was thinking there must be additional details somewhere but couldn't find any in the question history, so it must be low-rep lack of privileges. Also I know "thanks"-only comments are discouraged but thanks for the helpful edits--I normally try to avoid hyperlinks where "this x" is the only linked text but somehow hadn't thought of simply using actual the question title. Learning the mores of a new group can be a challenge and the subtle guidance of edits is both informative and considerate.
    – cpit
    Apr 12, 2021 at 1:17
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    It is a useful feature that a simple link to a question will be displayed as that question's title; there are a number of "magic links" for comments which are documented in MSE.
    – Andrew Leach Mod
    Apr 14, 2021 at 7:14

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