I don't disagree with that assessment, per se, but I don't think much can be done about it. The message doesn't say, "Fuck off, you worthless loser", it says (t

I don't disagree with that assessment, per se, but I don't think much can be done about it. The message doesn't say, "Fuck off, you worthless loser", it says (taken from the site), "This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please edit this question to explain how it is different or ask a new question." The fact that you interpret this as "fuck off" more or less proves my point that anything hinting at, "Maybe the answer can be found here" will be interpreted by new users as "fuck off". As for statistics, you may be able to find some by querying the data explorer: https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/new https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/new I suspect it would be difficult to (automatically) distinguish between instances where a user was discouraged by the message and instances where the user's question was answered at the link. Perhaps the fraction of instances where the question was edited after being marked as a duplicate, then re-opened, is an OK metric for how willing a given community is to re-open questions.