He's not the only one who has this impression that it happens constantly. And there are enough such people that they can't easily be dismissed as malcontents and troublemakers.
I still ask questions once in awhile... if you're desperate, there's a chance that it slips past their asshole guards and gets noticed by someone willing to help. But it's certainly unusual at this point.
Once a culture of moderation develops, moderators have to moderate just to feel like they're useful/important. They do this even if moderation isn't needed. Instead of just keeping a watch out for the uncommon problem question, they're inspecting many/most of them and looking for reasons to close/delete. It's too high of a bar, the purpose of the site is to help those who don't necessarily know enough to ask brilliant questions. Or maybe it isn't anymore.
We've cultivated an entire society of busybodies out there measure lawns with rulers, so to speak. It would take decades to roll this back to something sane.
Not all, but some of my questions also got downvoted or closed. You might not be able to see them when your reputation score is too low (also somewhat stupid).
The reasons of closes or downvotes vary:
- Being off-topic for the site. Which is often very arbitrary. And I don't fully agree with what they want to have as on-topic. E.g. they don't want to ask for library or software recommendations. I understand the reasoning (might be opinionated and can easily get outdated) but there are some cases where there are canonical answers even to those, and in most cases, it's still useful.
- Or quality not good enough yet. I don't think it's a good reason to close a question or downvote it. If it is unclear, people should just comment and ask for further clarifications.
- Duplicate. Sometimes it's true, but sometimes also not, as the question ask for a somewhat different thing.
Here are some examples, linked in this post: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/127617/how-much-res...
Here are some more:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/69721352/pycharm-style-d...
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65492932/ficlone-vs-ficl...
You don't have to, but can you give some examples of good answers being deleted or good questions being closed? I'm just surprised I always see some people on HN furious at SO, and wonder why their experience is so different from mine.
Btw, regarding old questions, I always make sure I search SO before I post my question, and if any similar questions exist, I link them in my new question and say "I found this [url1] but it doesn't apply to my situation because of circumstances XYZ". This is simply good practice to show you respect the community's time.