We generally believe that it's important to keep the quality on Stack Overflow high, so that when you click on a stackoverflow.com result on Google, you can trust that you're going to get something good. That means that Stack Overflow is not just a host where anyone can type things into the Internet, and we host it. It's a curated environment.
I literally clicked randomly on a subject I know about to read a question and its answers:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15305764/angularjs-clear-...
The question is wrong, the answer is bad. Didn't get 'curated'.
Now take this one, a very useful question, great answers. It was 'curated' and it's only there because of page views:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...
SO should let us decide what is good or not, people don't like to be 'moderated'.
Now, that question is of that class, so it has been closed. However, there are exceptions. Normal humans are good at making exceptions and should have made one here. A certain type of personality -- one that's over-represented in engineers -- likes to create systems that don't have exceptions. They like to create abstractions. And then you get this.
It's also why you have people who still organize their email, even though search obviates that problem.
Like it or not, the types of questions you see allowed or discouraged on SO are in large part the result of years of discussion, debate, and collaborative moderation by a rather large portion of the userbase on SO. Even the handful of people able to take unilateral action to include or exclude questions are elected - hence the event that instigated this thread to begin with.
Ultimately, the folks with the most power over these decisions are the ones using the site. If you don't like what's being closed, cast your re-open votes and convince others to do likewise.
That particular question ended up being closed and reopened multiple times, and discussed heavily on meta. Ultimately, it reached the point where it was simply unmaintainable, in spite of the hard work of many people involved. So it was locked to preserve it.
If you visit some of the more well-maintained tag wikis, you'll notice they contain sections for freely-available books amid links to other useful learning resources. This tends to keep them smaller, easier to maintain, and much more likely to be maintained by folks who know something about the topic. Example:
This is not to say that most of what is closed shouldn't be closed. But your existing policies consistently drive away conversation that I'd like to be involved with, and contributers like me.
As a concrete example, I'm quite sure that my most upvoted answer on SO is on a question that would be instantly closed and deleted under current guidelines if it came to the attention of the SO policy lawyers who volunteer to "moderate". See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/93526/what-is-a-y-combina... to verify.
Incidentally, the answer just after yours is mine (lwburk), so don't draw too much attention to closing the question! What I'm more upset about is that the accepted answer is nothing more than a link (and has a lot more votes than your much better answer). That is definitely a historical accident. If these answers were each given today, yours would be voted much higher and his would be closed.
I've had personal interaction with moderators over that exact issue. I personally enjoyed answering algorithm questions. However it came to my attention that any time moderators notice that type of question, they close them for exactly that reason. (No matter what the wishes of people who ask and answer that type of question might be.)
As for the historical accident - I agree. I'm amazed that an answer given years after the question was asked got as much attention as it did.
