Why were restrictions introduced for Community Wiki?

Question

Can I ask why the current rules/restrictions for community wiki were introduced? Based on my previous question it looks like there used to be different rules. Community wikis were also used for capturing knowledge.

Examples:

• What's the strangest corner case you've seen in C# or .NET?
• What's the hardest or most misunderstood aspect of LINQ?
• What is the worst gotcha in C# or .NET?

Those questions are polls - something that is not allowed. There are plenty of other such Wikis and my feeling is that they are very valuable - you can hardly find such information together elsewhere. So can I ask why were the new rules introduced? When we check pouplarity, upvotes and visits those questions lead the leaderboards. Community likes these questions.

Edit:

I skimmed through the links from the answer. When I wrote my question I was little bit dissapointed that Community wiki is not for community. Now I see that community is divided into two groups with different ideas about content of community wikis. I still stand on my opition but at least I know that there is also different (and probably superior) opinion.

Answer 1

There has been a lot of discussion about CW, but here's the post that directly led to the changes:

What can we do to make Community Wiki better?

It contains links to some, but not all, of the earlier discussion.

There are plenty of other such Wikis and my feeling is that they are very valuable - you can hardly find such information together elsewhere.

Much of the debate is over whether these statements are true. Many people, like you, consider them to be informative/valuable; many others think they're "information junk food," which is kind of enjoyable in the short term but ultimately a fun diversion with no lasting benefit. Jeff Atwood, who runs the site, tends towards the latter category.

Jeff also disagrees with your second sentence; he thinks there are lots of places on the Internet for discussion of these topics, and he wants SO to be a place where people can get technical answers for technical questions. (I haven't looked for such discussion sites myself, so I can't comment directly.)