The irony is, finding a dupe often takes incomparable more effort than writing an answer.

It's not the irony, it's the core of the problem. People want answers and they want them quick. Even for answerers, if they know the answer, it's easier to write them down repeatedly than searching on the site for duplicates.

Of course you could give rep for finding duplicates, say for example +20 rep for every proposed duplicate that also gets confirmed. Maybe it increases the amount of questions that get closed as duplicates later on, but probably it would not change anything about questions first getting answered before anyone has found a dupe.

The value for the questioner is quite low by then. And I don't expect people to go hunting for dupes even for rep. If rep is a currency, it lost its value for me a long time ago.

Every technical solution for making finding dupes easier is welcome. I set my hopes in NLP-ML support over the coming years preventing dupe question from being asked in the first place, but that won't come soon, I guess.

This means that I totally agree with this idea and propose a fixed rep gain for every successful dupe closing, maybe even badges. But I also think that this will not solve the problem really. It's better than nothing though.

The irony is, finding a dupe often takes incomparable more effort than writing an answer.

It's not the irony; it's the core of the problem. People want answers and they want them quick. Even for answerers, if they know the answer, it's easier to write them down repeatedly than searching on the site for duplicates.

Of course, you could give rep for finding duplicates, say for example +20 rep for every proposed duplicate that also gets confirmed. Maybe it increases the amount of questions that get closed as duplicates later on, but probably it would not change anything about questions first getting answered before anyone has found a dupe.

The value for the questioner is quite low by then. And I don't expect people to go hunting for dupes even for rep. If rep is a currency, it lost its value for me a long time ago.

Every technical solution for making finding dupes easier is welcome. I set my hopes in NLP-ML support over the coming years preventing dupe question from being asked in the first place, but that won't come soon, I guess.

This means that I totally agree with this idea and propose a fixed rep gain for every successful dupe closing, maybe even badges. But I also think that this will not solve the problem really. It's better than nothing though.