Since the changes to the close as duplicate mechanism it is a lot more visible to the OP that there is/might be a duplicate to their question. Empirically, I've noticed a lot more people agreeing, in the comments under their question, that their question is a dupe.
For instance, here:
I'm aware that allowing a binding close vote is status-declined (back in the stone age) but now Stack Exchange is so much larger, and Stack Overflow is groaning under the weight of questions, I think this should be partially revisited.
Based on the principle that the simplest way to keep a site clean is to have as many people as possible nibbling away, I propose that the OP gets granted a binding close-as-duplicate vote.
It should simply be an additional line in the banner, which is shown only to the question asker. It might be something like this:
This question may already have an answer here:
"Allow question askers to close their own questions unilaterally" 3 answers
Does this fully answer your question? Yes / No
I'm not wedded to the Yes / No thing I just can't think of a better way at the moment.
Clicking on Yes would take the OP to the close as duplicate dialogue with that question highlighted. If there are multiple duplicate questions you'd need to ask the OP multiple times. A No could be used to track the relative success of the project, i.e.
- Whether the question subsequently gets closed.
- Whether the question gets reopened again.
- How many times the OP actually clicks.
- How many times the OP disagrees with the analysis of the community.
Potentially, a No could be used to open a comment dialogue asking the OP to explain why they think their question is not a duplicate thereby stopping them simply putting "this is not a duplicate" in the question and formalising this process somewhat. Not sure about this idea...
I do not think this should be restricted by reputation, anyone should be able to close their own question as a duplicate. It gives people with lower reputation a more positive experience of the closing process and emphasises the importance of duplicate finding.
Most importantly, self-closes should not, initially, count towards the question ban. We can help new users learn how to use a lot more of the site than they might otherwise see and encourage them to search for duplicates more thoroughly. If the OP then goes on to do the same thing 10 times in a row then you can start using it toward the ban as they're obviously using the users as a personalised search service but at least the first 3-4 times this should not have any effect.
This question is, deliberately, only requesting 20% of the linked question (from 2009) and then only based on the new UI. The linked question asks for binding migration votes etc, which I do not want to see and I am not requesting a binding close-as-duplicate for the OP until someone else has already voted to close (though I think if the OP has 3k rep this might be allowable). This, I hope, addresses the concern's raised in the linked question and explains why this is not a duplicate of that question.