I understand the mods there are volunteers, and appreciate that. On your #2, it seems you're saying the mod has to call it an off-topic question even if he/she

I understand the mods there are volunteers, and appreciate that. On your #2, it seems you're saying the mod has to call it an off-topic question even if he/she is locking it for another reason. If so, then it wouldn't be the mods' fault, it'd be the SO developers'. It's still a path to ruination. I disagree that a valid on-topic question for SO should be limited to definitely answerable questions (in this case, where a pro or con can be proven). If that's the case they should make that clear in their FAQ; I don't think they do that. While that can be their unwritten rule if they want, it makes SO much less valuable for programming questions for me, because not all programming questions I find valuable are definitely answerable, like the one I referred to. 400+ people (on net) found that question to be valuable. I don't think a question asking about pros/cons for a programming design decision is a discussion question. A discussion question would be more like "Would you store images in the database, or just links to files?" Even someone who prefers the former could potentially list out pros/cons for both choices.