I always search SO hard before asking a question. And let's be honest, the site isn't necessarily optimized for search (answers tend to reuse question terminology, which often isn't the broadest relevant terminology), so sometimes finding what I'm looking for is laborious.
My question is, are we punishing searchers? I don't ask a lot of questions (to date, zero), quite frankly, because I can always find the answer. Sometimes I find it elsewhere and forget to re-ask on SO, which admittedly is my own fault - but I think the point holds.
However, I routinely see very-near-but-not-exactly-duplicate questions voted up and answered with no recourse. And I don't see that as a mostly solvable problem.
Maybe I'm just venting because I feel like I am punished for not asking questions without searching first. What does Meta think?