The moderators on SO will say it "isn't a good fit for the software". They have no data to back this claim, but will go to great lengths to rationalize it as fundamental to the software rather than a strong shared opinion of the moderators. It is a religious thing like tabs vs spaces. There was an initial kick in one direction and the moderators came down with a strong prejudicial meme against these kinds of questions.
Neither do you. I'm the moderator who undeleted and locked that question so it can't be deleted again (after ten community members voted to delete it). I've argued in the past in their favor, but the community (not moderators alone) decided that this type of question isn't a good fit and we don't want to encourage more of them by keeping the old ones open.
As for them not being a good fit for the software, frankly they're not. Just look at the "Hidden Features of C#" question. There are over 300 answers. Many duplicates had to be deleted because no one is going to take the time to read them all to see if their answer was already posted. This isn't really the kind of thing we (again, the community, not just moderators) want on Stack Overflow. We want to focus more on questions that have one objectively best answer.
Even if it's not a religious issue, or subject to one mod's whims, it can still be a cultural one. Maybe this just means there's room for a Metafilter-type programming community where subjectivity is a larger component.
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The moderators on SO will say it "isn't a good fit for the software". They have no data to back this claim, but will go to great lengths to rationalize it as fundamental to the software rather than a strong shared opinion of the moderators. It is a religious thing like tabs vs spaces. There was an initial kick in one direction and the moderators came down with a strong prejudicial meme against these kinds of questions.
> They have no data to back this claim...
Neither do you. I'm the moderator who undeleted and locked that question so it can't be deleted again (after ten community members voted to delete it). I've argued in the past in their favor, but the community (not moderators alone) decided that this type of question isn't a good fit and we don't want to encourage more of them by keeping the old ones open.
Here's the old discussion about these questions where I defended them: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/56669/should-hidden-...
As for them not being a good fit for the software, frankly they're not. Just look at the "Hidden Features of C#" question. There are over 300 answers. Many duplicates had to be deleted because no one is going to take the time to read them all to see if their answer was already posted. This isn't really the kind of thing we (again, the community, not just moderators) want on Stack Overflow. We want to focus more on questions that have one objectively best answer.
You are right, my claim that this is moderator specific is misleading. It is a meme of the current active SO community.
My general claim is merely that the closing of these questions is not implacably imposed by the software, but is instead a community choice.
I don't think we disagree on this being a 'religious' issue. I am clearly an SO apostate.
Even if it's not a religious issue, or subject to one mod's whims, it can still be a cultural one. Maybe this just means there's room for a Metafilter-type programming community where subjectivity is a larger component.