Given the way the comments are going, do you want to break those reasons out into two questions? It will be easier to defend community approval of any new close reason if the vote is unambiguous.

I hear you, Shog, but the highest-voted answer in the request for more close votes (linked above) predicted that given an increase in close votes without a concomitant increase in review queue limits, we'd see a jump in the size of the review queues. So far, that seems to be exactly what's happened.

@MichaelHampton would you mind clarifying in the question which panels this is intended to apply to, then? Not using any of them, I'm no expert at distinguishing between the good and bad panels.

That is a pretty fair point. But we also would like you to try something different - actually honouring the promise that "We don’t run this site. The community does.". It's easy to honour that when all goes well; there is then nothing in contention. It's what you do when things aren't seen as going well that says whether or not it's worth the screen space on which it's written.

If force majeure is to be used, there must be some repercussion when it's used wrongly. In this case, I (for one) don't find that the hypothesis (HN was running around smashing windows) has been proven. On the contrary, I've seen quite a lot of good argument that he was engaging in business that was (a) usual for him, (b) in line with his election platform. And as a side question, am I by any chance right in thinking that Shog9 is a paid employee?

Shog, me too. I don't question your experience, but I do question why the powers that be seem to question everyone else's (and their motivation). All things die. You are right to note that. You may not be right in using that observation to justify your particular theory of why they die. We might have other explanations for why a community is dying (as you claim this one is); observing that a phenomenon is happening does not prove one hypothetical explanation of that phenomenon over another.

Shog, please, calm down. You may feel as you write above, and it looks as if you do, and passionately, too. But the community is entitled to have a viewpoint on this (this being the issue of quality of questions, and the desirable disposition of those perceived to be poor), too. I believe it has pretty clearly expressed it, over time. I know the powers that be don't like what the community says, but it's a legitimate viewpoint, and discourse is unlikely to be improved by constant unilateral emotive denial. We desire to handle these things efficiently, we disagree about how.

Which claim(s) do you reject? That the community has been told how to moderate, that HN was at the vanguard of a community pushback, or that if volunteers are overruled they will become disheartened?

@MarkHenderson one does indeed act that way, in a company. But this isn't a company; it's a community. When you aren't in a top-down, I-pay-your-wages scenario, but are instead trying to do something good on the shoulders of volunteers, best practice is different.

If SE wants the community to moderate, it might help if it stopped constantly telling us that we're doing it wrong. It's all very well to wish that poor HN had asked for help, but you seem to forget that at his election he was leading the vanguard of yet another attempt by the community to hold back the sea of rubbish. If SE repeatedly, and sometimes forcibly, prevents the community from imposing its collective will on the site, why on earth act surprised when all it can hear is tumbleweeds?

I wouldn't, myself. I think the old question is better written, and has better answers.

Fair enough! Then to be clear, I think I completely agree with you! And thanks for being so gracious during the course of this discussion - I, too, felt bad, because I hadn't spent the time required to find the dupe (yaaay Michael).

Fair points. Your question title is specifically about the deletion, to which I was not party, and on which perhaps I should not comment. Given that you accept it deserved closure, however, perhaps you could edit your question to make that clear (which it currently does not), and clarify why you think this particular question, once closed, adds value in not being deleted?