Wikipedia has a solution to such a problem. This is done by a nice short welcome message explaining the importance of a few rules, rather than simply pointing out the FAQs, and tons of best practices papers and guidelines it has. On top of this, whenever a user makes a mistake he is given a chance to correct it by opening a dispute page. Perhaps we can consider something like that here. If a question is a duplicate, give the user a chance to defend it and maybe even go so far as to stop downvotes on a disputed page? Because on Stack Overflow, once a question is disputed, downvotes seem to fly off faster than the speed of thought.
So what we need is a template for disputed content. A few such categories would be:
- Duplicate
- Belongs on UserVoice
- Offtopic
- Offensive
- Read the FAQ (This tag might be too vague?).
Once a post gets tagged with any of the above tags, a small block explaining the details of such a tag should appear by default on the question itself with an automatic link to a resolution page where the community can vote and discuss it. If consensus is gained, the question can be deleted without getting voted down. This will preserve the reputation points of the user as well and this will make the responses of the question more clean, as right now the discussions on such disputed questions seem to be more about the dispute and less about the question. Just my 2 pyas.
