Speaking as one of TheCleaner's "regulars," I've been ruminating and have a similar but slightly different too-long-for-a-comment.
I think you can also break the site down into Answerers, Mods, and Questioners. There's clearly overlap among the three, but...
Answerers:
You get to help people with their interesting real-world technical problems and in return you get public recognition and egoboo. I don't understand why people aren't lining up around the block to answer questions! :) (Okay, I'm sure that everyone has "helped" one or more ungrateful boors, or answered really easy questions out of pity for someone's plight, but you know. I'm talking about the ideal.)
Mods, official and unofficial:
As I see it, they're trying to:
- Help keep things running smoothly for Questioners and Answerers, and
- Curate a list of excellent technical questions and answers.
The closing of questions is actually for both reasons--because people get burned out answering the same question over and over again, and because all the duplicates don't really make for a well-curated set of Qs and As.
Questioners:
Sometimes a member of the two other groups will ask a question, but generally speaking, these are people who want their problem solved. And, frankly, I think I see a bit of Dunning-Kruger/Imposter Syndrome in the questions.
To quote wikipedia's definitions (linked above):
Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
- tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
- fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
- fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
- recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.
And:
The impostor syndrome, sometimes called impostor phenomenon or fraud syndrome, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.
Wikipedia says that Imposter Syndrome affects 2/5 of successful people.
I see a lot of good questions open with remarks like, "I'm so sorry to trouble all of you with my incredibly stupid question," while questions that are basically "I followed this web page and it didn't work help!" are sometimes outraged when you close their question as Not Good. Either way, they're not concerned about a well-curated set of Qs and As, as has been pointed out by TheCleaner and others, and may not even realize that's happening. They have a problem they want help solving.
(And, to be perfectly fair, we sometimes have Dunning-Kruger answerers as well. We don't have a lot of Imposter Syndrome answerers, as by definition they may be too intimidated to post. Some of the trouble I'm having in encouraging people to hang out and answer questions is convincing them that they are absolutely awesome and smart enough to answer questions here.)
And, your point?
I think we're very focused on turning away the "clueless" Dunning-Kruger folks and less focused on encouraging the Imposter Syndrome folks. Part of that is, well. I'm so answer-focused that I sometimes forget to upvote good questions, so I'm also not doing my part to encourage those folks. I also don't always upvote good questions and answers while reviewing, despite vivid memories of how asquee I was as a n00b when someone upvoted me. :) I need to do better on both points.
I think what I'm getting at is: The questioners think the site is about them, and they're right in the sense that without them we don't have any questions to answer. I think any "How can we get rid of more terrible questions?" discussion must include "How can we encourage more good questions?" as well. I think some of our target questioners--people we want to ask questions--are intimidated (and the questions that start with, "I'm so sorry my question is so stupid and horrible!" bear this out). (2/5 of successful people, y'all.)
Or, to put it more briefly: People are not good judges of their own abilities, and people who would ask good questions are not always confident about doing so. I'm not convinced the clueless are driving away good questions. I think attempts to discourage the clueless are driving away good questions.