Are moderators closing good questions as "Not constructive" [closed]

Question

Lately I've been noticing a number of questions being closed under the "Not Constructive" criteria. Some of these are clearly very constructive, in the sense of containing, as answers, useful tips and knowledge that people can use to do constructive things. I understand there is a reason to close questions that cause emotional or highly subjective responses, but in these cases, the question can only be seen as generating useful, objective and non-emotional responses. In fact, in most of the cases I've seen, the answers have all been exactly that.

For reference, the text of the "Not Constructive" reason:

We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; 
this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, 
or extended discussion.

Here is an example of a closure I can't understand: https://stackoverflow.com/q/826208/240633

Although the title seems to indicate some sort of Vim jihad, the questioner is simply asking for ways to use vim keybindings in other tools. To me, this is perfectly reasonable and entirely "constructive". The only clauses that remotely applies to this question, that I can see, are possibly the "polling" or "extended discussion", but I don't see opinions being solicited so it's not a poll, and since answers are particular ways to do what the OP asks, I'm not sure how "extended discussion" applies either.

Another example: https://stackoverflow.com/q/95072/240633

Although I understand this is an open-ended question, and in some sense a poll, the answers are useful, and it devalues this site when such questions aren't allowed in some form. If the intent of "Not Constructive" is to disallow all poll-like questions, there is no place for a lot of useful answers.

I had another example - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1295634/best-gvim-tricks-for-programming - but the question was deleted shortly after I posted a negative comment about the moderation. Google has a cache without my comment and before the moderation: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FhiaICeRrooJ:stackoverflow.com/questions/1295634/best-gvim-tricks-for-programming+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Answer 1

Possibly; regardless of my opinion on the examples you've posted, it should be clear that moderators are human and do make mistakes.

Fortunately, the community has the ability to re-open questions closed by moderators (or other users) and by doing so forestall the deletion of such questions.

If you want additional attention for a question you feel has been wrongly closed, feel free to bring it up here on Meta, or in chat - there's even a dedicated chatroom for users to collaborate on and discuss the moderation of specific questions.

Users with at least 10K reputation points on Stack Overflow have access to additional tools for reviewing questions that have been or are about to be closed or deleted. Community-minded users should take full advantage of this...

Answer 2

I don't like the term "not constructive." The term I would use is "not definitive." The text would be something like: "This question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion because it cannot be answered clearly and definitively using facts, references, or specific expertise."

On this site, a "not constructive" question could mean one that attracts too many "pretty good" possible answers but no one that stands out from all the rest. "Not constructive" is a SITE definition that means "The question does not lend itself well to one best answer.

Thus, there can be many "good" questions that the moderators close because they are "not constructive" as the SITE defines the term.

Answer 3

Yes, there are many open-ended, subjective and list-request questions, which are highly upvoted, that are closed as not constructive.

But in fact, they are the perfect fit for:

We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or specific expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion.

So the moderators are just being just and treating all the questions the same, no matter when they were asked and how many upvotes they have.

I personally think that list questions or recommendation questions may sometimes be useful, but I respect the guidelines of SE owners. If such questions are not welcomed not, the old questions following the same pattern should be closed too. Otherwise we would have a flood of posts like that:

Why my question for favorite trick / best tools library / best tutorial was closed? There is question X which is similar to mine and it has 300 upvotes! I thought such questions should be used as example what is good and welcomed here?

Answer 4

I've seen many questions closed as "not constructive" or "off-topic" even though the community had clearly shown otherwise. Most recent example, today, was a Community Wiki question active since 2008 which was single-handedly put on hold by a moderator.

Answer 5

UPDATE: since the time of the question the new sites Software Recommendations and Hardware Recommendations-beta were created, to which many of closed questions should migrate.

I agree with your point in comments, that community should find a place for questions that currently do not fit to Q&A format. They are often valuable. I've posted my suggestion at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/180767/new-stackexchange-discussion-site-for-not-constructive-questions.

Unfortunately, many of community members made their opinion and do not listen for different suggestions, that will reduce unending fight with recommendation/multiple answers questions.