[commentzorro]

>> There is a perpetual tension between those who want SE to be helping everyone, and those who want to curate a helpful resource.

I never understood this. Why have one or the other instead of both. All questions funnel in on a "everyone" area for a particular type of question. (Junior people can moderate those to gain experience if the senior mods don't want to. This will give them experience, insight, etc.) Even the most repetitive and/or superficial homework question can be answered and not closed as duplicate. (Or at least pointed to the duplicates but not closed until the questioner has accepted a duplicate as an acceptable answer.)

When "good quality" appear or new/unique questions and answers appear they can be refined and moved over into a curated persistent section for future reference. The senior mods can take over at this point to make sure the reference Q&A are as they like.

I always hated that "closed as duplicate" reply especially if I'd already seen the supposed duplicates and didn't think they applied. This approach would allow those to be answered by new people or ignored if nobody wanted to answer.