I agree that a statement in this generality is non-sense. (If it were a skill, how would you acquire it without asking a question.) What is meant here (probably

I agree that a statement in this generality is non-sense. (If it were a skill, how would you acquire it without asking a question.) What is meant here (probably) is sth. like "asking a good question" is a skill -- where "good" could be defined in any number of ways. In this context, it's probably synonymous to "getting the reply you're actually after without someone closing your question, or marking it as a dupe". That probably is a skill. However, SO would be a more useful place, especially but not only for newcomers, if that skill wasn't required. If anyone could ask anything, and as long as there's someone willing to answer, it doesn't matter whether the question could be deemed "skillful" by any measure. There are a number of reasons why SO isn't that place, and I can see why these reasons exist. It's a fun thought experiment to think about whether SO would have made it to the place it is today if it had started out already with the same draconic rules and views on how questions should be written as are in place today.