Why? The only thing closing a question does is prevent new people from answering. In some sense it's in fact a better “deal” for those who did answer before the question was closed, because they'll have less “competition”. (Of course no one is thinking in those terms, but I'm trying to understand why questions being closed or not should be a deterrence to someone answering questions that are open.) Where do terms like “self-righteousness” come from?

(Also note that it's not the “moderators” who close or open questions, but the community itself: anyone with over 3000 points can close or reopen, which right now is over 500 users on MathOverflow. It's a small site as it's for research mathematicians; for comparison on Stack Overflow there are over 46000 users who can vote to close or reopen questions.)

Or they could create a different website for these types of questions. Or you could. There's no reason for SE to be all things to all people; I like that they have a focus.

> too self-absorbed in their self-righteousness

I'm feeling the self-righteousness, but it's not coming from SE...

>I'm feeling the self-righteousness, but it's not coming from SO...

Relax.

I am relaxed. Don't add patronising to self-righteous.