Everybody who isn't interested in more generic questions, recommendations for libraries, opinions etc stays away from those threads and everybody lives happily ever after.

What is more important is what shouldn't be done - pages and pages of rules and exact definitions of what is and is not worthy of being a question, with a bunch of language lawyers (who, by the way, for the most part have very little content knowledge yet don't let that stop them from having an opinion on everything) spending ungodly amounts of time combing through the details of every post to judge what does and does not conform to the all mighty 'rules'.

I have several times had people with no knowledge (judging from their comment history) and much less time on the site than I have, jump on questions or answers that didn't fit their mindlessly rigid mental image of 'how things should be' and actually detract from the usefulness of the question by their whining about formatting, phrasing of questions, how other content is linked etc.

'Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds', illustrated nowhere as dramatically (and saddeningly) as on Stack Overflow.

I'm way more bitter than I should be over something I rationally should just shrug of. But dammit every time something good pops up, the idiots take over after 2 or 3 years. Most Usenet groups, Slashdot, BoS forums, this site - tragedy of the commons, it's perfectly rational and explainable, I understand how and why, and still I hate when it happens, every time.