And I do! With lots of swearing! :)
The only time I'm on SO is from a Google search result. They should at least make the danged site noindex itself for that page if it's the question has been closed. You wouldn't believe the amount of times I've been searching for a solution and found a SO link and thought I had the answer coming my way only to see the thing was closed before anyone could answer the question.
In all honesty, I don't give a rats why a question was closed. It was either closed and is now useless or open and has answers.
The solution is to make the closed question not appear in Google search results. If the same question keeps appearing the solution is to let someone answer it.
This is a great idea. Have you considered discussing it on the Meta site?
The solution would definitely have to be more nuanced - sometimes "closed" questions have useful answers on them so you wouldn't want to remove those from Google. But removing "closed" questions that provide no value would probably be an improvement.
I generally consider myself a dumbass and not smart enough to figure out the rules to avoid getting topics closed, so I stick to reddit and HN (and it took years of lurking here before I started posting too!)
So maybe, just maybe a slightly broad question with a couple answers may be better that an theoretically ideal set of a thousand (question, answer) tuples each trying to fit a very restricted case. Unfortunately some mods seem hell-bent on promoting the latter, possibly in hope of writing bots that solve-by-Google (see stacksort[0]).
I think there are two kinds of "broad":
1. There are multiple ways to solve a specific problem with a specific expected outcome. "How do I sort an array?", for example, is a broad question in that it can be solved in many ways, but you can definitively say whether any given solution is correct or not.
2. The problem is not specific, and there is no clear way to determine whether any given answer is actually a "solution". For example, a single question with only the text, "How do you write a game?"
Most "broad" questions fall on some spectrum between these two, but the closer a question is to the latter category, the less likely it is to generate any sort of helpful feedback. The community does sometimes label the former as "too broad", but 95% of the time the given close reasons are correct, and when they are wrong the site provides documentation on how to get your question re-opened.
It's hard to maintain a proper balance between moderating the inundation of terrible questions and avoiding the false-negative closing of legitimate questions.
But hey, it's their site, and I'm just some rando on the internet - they get to make whatever policies they want.
Allowing such questions effectively lowers the percentage of questions that get good answers, thereby training users NOT to expect an answer to a posted question, and leading to decreased engagement.
On the other hand, by disallowing such questions, the questions that do get asked are more likely to be answered, and this encourages repeat visits and increased engagement.
Just thought I'd let you know you haven't been shouting into the wind!
The scenario you describe is somewhat different, in which the asker is well aware they have a broad question. Such people are advised to make clear that they know full well it is a broad question and are seeking broad comment on multiple viable approaches.
So, you're absolutely correct. Demonstrations of the many ways to do so are extremely useful to many people! It is, however, highly likely that few - if any - will be useful to the person asking the question.
You're very right - this is a personality test. Do you try to jump directly to trying to answer an apparently-simple question, or do you cautiously consider if the simple question hides complex depths (deeply nested structures, arrays of variable length, etc.) that make a simple and straightforward answer difficult?
I think the last 3 times I've gone to SO to write a question I spend an hour finding the right code samples, explaining what the problem is and why I need to solve it. Why I've chosen this route and after all that has been put down on the page I see what the real issue is and solve it before its even submitted.
It's almost become another tool to use, "How would I structure this problem if I needed help from the community?" It forces you to think through the problem into the route cause, almost like debugging your thoughts and removing the bloat
This is, unfortunately, an unsolvable problem. They're asking the question precisely because they don't understand what they're asking enough to get a meaningful answer.