[nhzmju]

Having read over 5000( yes really ) questions and searched over 100 with Google, that didn't happen once.

Just to clarify, SE doesn't always have the question, but it always has the answer.

It must be related to the specific field you are searching for; older ones are usually complete. I wouldn't be surprised if a more casual programming field has a larger ratio of closed answers.

[slantyyz]

It seems to happen with certain areas of interest more than others. I would say I encounter them in as much as 30% of my searches, which are web development related.

While I understand the intentions of the moderators, they seem to assess the value of a question for people at the moderator's own skill level than at the people who might be asking the question or seeking an answer to a particular question.

The silver lining for me is that at least they don't delete the questions and answers they mod down. I've found a lot of useful stuff in questions that the mods didn't like.

[nhzmju]

Thank you for your response, I will comment per paragraph:

SE has good rules which keep questions relevant. I would say that if the question is closed and there are no existing duplicates, then the question itself doesn't have much value. ( There are of course outliers. )

There is a misunderstanding here, moderators on SE don't actually close most of the questions, normal users with privileges to do that, do so by voting. So such a question doesn't have value because users decided so, not moderators.

The last paragraph shares the misconception with the previous one. Users vote on and close question. Inf fact moderators are so rare on SE, that they only do critical things that should not be trusted to users, which do the rest.

[jshen]

"if the question is closed and there are no existing duplicates, then the question itself doesn't have much value."

Not fitting the guidelines of SO and not having much value are two very different things. Are you sure you meant the latter?

[davidism]

They don't have much value to Stack Overflow, obviously, otherwise they would have remained opened and been voted up on Stack Overflow.

[pc86]

I think the point is these often are upvoted questions[1] with thought out answers. In fairness, I would argue the question I just referenced doesn't "belong" on SO as it's pretty clearly based in opinion. But if I Google "simple django rich text editor" and this is the first result, I would argue it does bring value to SO by bringing me onto the site.

[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4674609/looking-for-a-ric... (not my find, posted in another comment on this thread)

[x0x0]

Yup.

Having strict moderation standards is SO's business. I may or may not agree, but it seems to work for them.

Leaving closed questions, particularly those without answers, on their site sucking up google juice and deceptively appearing in my search results is scummy. If they don't want it on their site, they should ask google not to crawl it. And that goes squared when the question doesn't have an answer.

[slantyyz]

>> moderators on SE don't actually close most of the questions, normal users with privileges to do that, do so by voting.

To a person _arriving at SO from Google_, "moderator" and "normal users with privileges" are basically the same thing, even though they may be technically different. And, those "normal users with privileges" tend to be overly aggressive when flagging questions as "off topic" or "opinion-based".

[pc86]

As stated, this happens almost entirely with (a) questions that could be considered opinion-based (up to discussion whether these belong on SO, SO's stance is they do not); (b) specific long-tail questions that may have very precise or specific answers.

Googling 100 things (which is not a lot) is not likely to return more than 1 or 2 of these at most. It's rare that I hit this but I've seen it a dozen or so times at least. Most of the time it's a question that has been heavily upvoted with a heavily upvoted (and accepted) answer.

[lnanek2]

Happens to me constantly. The best questions for me are always like how best to make money in an Android app, which StackOverflow hates because there isn't any clear answer, just many people who have tried many ad networks, free and pro apps, etc.. The only questions they seem to allow are trivial things I know from reading documentation anyway.