Simple answer: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110350/why-are-useful-questions-on-stackoverflow-being-closed-as-non-constructive http://meta.stackoverfl

Simple answer: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110350/why-are-useful-questions-on-stackoverflow-being-closed-as-non-constructive http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/110350/why-are-usefu... Not a fan of this myself. When there is a pool of thousands of smart people who are willing to answer in a certain format, hundreds of thousands who are looking to read those answers in that format, outright banning that format is a little unfortunate in my opinion. If you want to maintain a certain style for SO, then perhaps there's some outlet for these "discussion format" style questions on there that could be marked as such. To disallow smart people from solving problems because they don't adhere to one strict format is a tragedy.