This is the requested, uh, feature request from https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/251207/169018
tl;dr; Search should be a first-class citizen on the Stack Exchange network. Putting a bright and shiny search box front and center should help make it so.
I would really (really) love a more prominent search box than the tiny box in the upper right. My completely unfounded and likely wrong gut feeling says that if you make it more obvious that each site is searchable then the tide of poor quality or duplicate questions (on StackOverflow, at least) should recede somewhat.
Something like this:
For non-users, make the search the focus of the home page; I would assume the styling for the "intro" block could be leveraged. I can make a more fleshed-out prototype if requested.
Since I coped that search bar directly from the search results page, it goes without saying that most of the infrastructure is already in place. The major difference is adding some tooling to make it easier to transition the search into a new question.
Please note that this topic has been brought up before, without gaining too much traction - at the very least, I don't see any SO devs weighing in:
- Move search to the top center of stackoverflow and all other sites?
- Give greater dominance/placement to searching rather than asking for new/low rep users
Feel free to close this as a dupe of either one of those questions, if so inclined.