It's a matter of perspective about who's starting hostilities when a questioner asks with no obvious investment of effort! But that way leads to endless squabbl

It's a matter of perspective about who's starting hostilities when a questioner asks with no obvious investment of effort! But that way leads to endless squabbles fairly soon. Clearly it's good to deter such people, but where I think SO could improve a little is if it had some more up front deterrence, and thus avoided more of the naive (some would say lazy) questioners from proceeding, only to get embarrassed/called out. They do try to identify similar questions but perhaps a specific step right before a new user submits asking them to highlight which part of their question covers what they've already tried/researched (with a friendly option to add such a part if they've merely overlooked it) Like you, I've never seen it particularly unfair or harsh, but smoothing things along helps everyone.