I think Stack Overflow has reached a point where most of its regular power users would be happier if there were no more new questions. Then they could dedicate their time to putting the correct tags on things, closing and deleting the remaining backlog until there's nothing left. :-)
I have over 10k points there, so this is said (mostly) in jest. There is a lot of crap being pumped into SO all the time. This kind of defensive closing of an interesting but off-topicy question is the only real tool people have over there. If they had let this question go unclosed, it could encourage other less-interesting open-ended questions and before you know it we'd be seeing "best kind of Pizza topping for programmers?" questions.
I have over 10k points there, so this is said (mostly) in jest. There is a lot of crap being pumped into SO all the time. This kind of defensive closing of an interesting but off-topicy question is the only real tool people have over there. If they had let this question go unclosed, it could encourage other less-interesting open-ended questions and before you know it we'd be seeing "best kind of Pizza topping for programmers?" questions.