[howardr]

Very clever. This seems like something I would see on reddit or even here on HN rather than on stack overflow.

I find the "locked" and "closed" messages very interesting. It is a good indication of the type of culture the stack overflow community has. While I find this very funny, many people that run the community clearly want people to ask seriously questions and for people to give thoughtful and on topic answers (not to suggest that it is a bad thing).

[TeMPOraL]

That's something I always had problem with, and never had courage to ask about. Topics I find really, really interesting and valuable like [1] or [2] are closed because they're not constructive enough. A topic in which books for programmers got crowdsorted by importance is not constructive enough. It seems to me that every question that is not of the form very-specific-problem -> precise-answer is unwelcome there.

[1] - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711/what-is-the-single-m...

[2] "New Programming Jargon You Coined", seems to have been deleted since last time I checked - http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/122164/can-we-un-del.... I found it valuable not only because it was funny (which is, I believe, important in IT), but also because it exposed me to some tricks & techniquest I've never seen before, + provided me with some nice vocabulary, which can help me be closer with tech community worldwide.

[jon6]

The stackoverflow elites take their jobs way too seriously.

[georgieporgie]

If I recall correctly, a stated goal in starting Stack Overflow was to encourage developers to improve their writing. Ultimately, they created a site which encourages developers to act like bureaucrats.