From the comments here and the answers and comments on Michael Hampton's post about Admin panel questions, it seems pretty clear to me that:

 - we have broad agreement that those sorts of questions are usually off-topic
 - the vast majority of the questions Noob closed (possibly all, but I don't think  multiple people are going to go through the whole list and check them all) were, in fact, off-topic.

So at this point, it seems like all that's needed is for Noob (and possibly other mods) to agree that before undertaking any big clean-up effort they'll make a meta post about it to let everyone know what's going on and give people a chance to comment.

Soon, hopefully?

Adding to the Drama
-------------------

I know I probably shouldn't add to the drama of this situation, but I can't help it - I _do_ have an opinion and I suspect it's shared by many:

There really seems to be an intent on the part of SE staff to "get" Noob: 

1. Shog's initial answer comes across to me as very emotionally loaded, e.g. statements like:

>Now I'm getting a bit worried, especially since these closures (and comments) are still appearing while I'm researching.

If he's in the middle of what he thinks of as a simple cleanup, it's not surprising that they're still appearing.

>At this point, I'd already spent an unexpected amount of time on this, and from the look of things I'd be spending a lot more. And closed questions were still piling up;

Again, this isn't surprising, if there are lots of closed questions and someone decides they need to check them all, they can expect it to take time.

2. The comments about timing of responses:

I'm not going to take the time to put together a timeline of when Noob first mentioned he'd been de-modded, posts here, responses, etc.  But I _don't_ think it's unreasonable for Noob to spend some time thinking before posting.  

What I do think is totally unreasonable is this comment

> It did not attempt to answer the one question I asked.

"Explain yourself" is not a question, but the response you got is *definitely* an explanation of what Noob was doing.  It's a clear enough explanation for the rest of us to understand, it's hard (impossible) for me to understand how it can be interpreted as not attempting to answer the "question."

3. This comment on Noob's answer to the other Admin panel question:

> You avoided answering my question yesterday and you are straight-up lying here. I'm done trying to protect you.

Now *this* is overwrought drama: another comment about "avoiding answering" (does Noob get paid for being a mod? is there an SLA for mods to respond to SE staff?) and now Noob's opinion on Admin panel questions and what to do about them is labelled "lying"?  I've re-read Noob's answer 4 times now, and it's all his opinions, so to label that lying really looks to me like flying off the handle.