It boils my blood every time that I come across an interesting topic on SO just to see it locked. Something is wrong with the site when you see more topics locked than open.
Locked is all right, maybe it has the answer you're looking for. The shitty part is when you get a hit from google going to SO and the SO page is deleted because "this problem is too localised and unlikely to happen twice".
This is a trend in Google search results for forum threads. Especially common (and frustrating) is getting a link to a locked thread with a single response telling the OP to search for the answer to their question.
Rubbish. you're experiecing selection bias. Popular questions get posted to HN. Popular questions also get locked. These questions are in the tiniest minority.
Shouldn't they be able to do something better with popular content that is beneficial to the community and appropriate to the forum than "lock" it on a technicality?
Like this one I found useful the other day - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/81584/what-ide-to-use-for..., favorited by 1600 people, 1000 points, 5 answers with over 100 points ... locked because it's a bad question that doesn't suit the site. Just that it suits a lot of people using the site. Its score puts it at about 180 in their rank of 8.2 million questions and makes it the 8th most popular python question out of 350k.
Shouldn't they be able to do something better with popular content that is beneficial to the community and appropriate to the forum than "lock" it on a technicality?
Like what? The content is still accessible, and it's even CC licensed, so anyone can repurpose it. What more would you want them to do with it?
Celebrate it, encourage it, keep it open for further improvement ...?
If that mod had got to it earlier then it would have been "hidden" and the community wouldn't have created the great resource that it has in that question & its answers.
You can say "well just create that content elsewhere", but the community that creates that good content is at stackoverflow, and they want that content there (based on upvotes, responses, favouriting).