What makes it incredibly bad is that if you ask for advice, your question is closed. But if you ask a simple question, people often think you are stupid and question your intentions and give you unsolicited advice.
What I do nowadays is to pretend to be stupid, "I have the xyz issue, how do I do that with MySQL", and usually someone will comment that I should really be using a NoSQL solution, or how to do it in a relational database.
Example: I was looking for a canvas library for Gtk. (A canvas library gives you "retained mode" drawing, you say "here is a rectangle, there is a circle", and they stay there and you can manipulate them later on. Its the opposite of "immediate mode" where you have a paint handler that redraws the screen each time. It has nothing to do with HTML5 Canvas.) There are a couple of Gtk canvas libraries, but most of them seem no longer developed and they have various issues. Its also very confusing since some are named very similarly. I posted a nice, informed question asking what libraries are out there that fulful certain criteria, and are still maintained. The question was closed in 5 minutes, and later even deleted. A few days later I posted another question, pretending to be clueless, asking "where is the canvas widget in Gtk? I know there is one but I can't make it work". Then, I got helpful comments like "AFAIK there is none built in, but I recommend this library...". The irony is that the non-deleted question is not very helpful to anybody, but the original one would have been an excellent reference.
When you have to jump through silly hoops to ask your question, something is clearly wrong with the community.
If you build 'Your question is bad and you are bad for asking it' into your constitution instead of finding a more constructive solution for noise, bad things will happen.
The principle that closing questions avoids arguments is causing serious arguments. :) So - yes, something is broken.
SO needs to decide if it's:
1. A Wiki-like repository of canonical solutions to common coding problems.
2. A mentoring network for professionals.
3. A mentoring and training network for amateurs/students with wildly varying degrees of actual clue and potential clue.
4. A social network for people who like talking about code.
5. A way for coders to advertise their skills to employers.
6. An industry forum for debate about best practices.
At the moment different users are expecting different things from it - which is never going to work, because those goals are mutually exclusive.
SO might be saved if it splits into different sub-forms with explicit cultural differences and user backgrounds.
Also - code academy schools with principles like 'no feigned surprise' and 'don't be a dick' have a lead on this. It's possible SO would have worked better with those principles from the start.
What I do nowadays is to pretend to be stupid, "I have the xyz issue, how do I do that with MySQL", and usually someone will comment that I should really be using a NoSQL solution, or how to do it in a relational database.
Example: I was looking for a canvas library for Gtk. (A canvas library gives you "retained mode" drawing, you say "here is a rectangle, there is a circle", and they stay there and you can manipulate them later on. Its the opposite of "immediate mode" where you have a paint handler that redraws the screen each time. It has nothing to do with HTML5 Canvas.) There are a couple of Gtk canvas libraries, but most of them seem no longer developed and they have various issues. Its also very confusing since some are named very similarly. I posted a nice, informed question asking what libraries are out there that fulful certain criteria, and are still maintained. The question was closed in 5 minutes, and later even deleted. A few days later I posted another question, pretending to be clueless, asking "where is the canvas widget in Gtk? I know there is one but I can't make it work". Then, I got helpful comments like "AFAIK there is none built in, but I recommend this library...". The irony is that the non-deleted question is not very helpful to anybody, but the original one would have been an excellent reference.
When you have to jump through silly hoops to ask your question, something is clearly wrong with the community.