I have a better answer to this question than ArtOfCode's: yes, we absolutely could be more helpful. And we should be.

ArtOfCode claims that closure is not a punishment, but in fact it is a punishment, even if it is not intended to be one. It is a punishment because it prevents that person's question from being answered, and it wastes the effort of the asker. It is a punishment because although ArtOfCode claims "reopening is just as easy," surely even he cannot reconcile that claim with his simultaneous claim that the protem moderators are swamped with work and must pare questions preemptively to keep their heads above water. If that is true, then it is in fact not easy to get such a busy person to come back to review your question. A review of the time it takes to get your question reopened, compared with the typical time it takes to get a question answered, ought to shed light on that.

Commentary suggesting edits is a much better way of doing things than preemptively closing them. There is no real downside to letting a question which needs an edit sit around for half a day until the edit can fix it - and given the user, high-rated users, and mods can all edit questions, it is much, much more likely to get swiftly resolved than when a question is closed and shall remain that way, irrespective of any edits, until a mod remembers to review it again.

When 11 out of 15 questions are on hold, that is indicative that something we are doing is drastically wrong. Tweaks and "better efforts" from our moderators are not going to be enough to fix the problem. We need to change the way we do business, or change the purpose of the site completely. It's obvious there's quite a need out there, given the questions we do get, but we are currently not helping those people. Indeed, on several occasions I have personally seen mods tell those people that they have no idea where they could get their question fielded. That sucks, doesn't it?

Right now we are not a very helpful site; basically the rules as they are reduce us to glorified salespeople/product reviewers, and we aren't allowed to assist people with hardware troubleshooting - yet there is nowhere for those people to go. Those people are sometimes redirected to Super User, but that's a broad community with no special expertise in hardware troubleshooting.

I don't personally have time or the inclination to go on Area 51 and propose a hardware troubleshooting site, and I have seen mods from this site actively discourage similar sites with broader (IMHO, better) scopes from arising on Area 51, so I think it would be an uphill struggle, but anyone who could succeed in creating a hardware troubleshooting exchange on Area 51 and get it into beta would have the makings of a much more successful site than this one on their hands.

I have a better answer to this question than ArtOfCode's: yes, we absolutely could be more helpful. And we should be.

ArtOfCode claims that closure is not a punishment, but in fact it is a punishment, even if it is not intended to be one. It is a punishment because it prevents that person's question from being answered, and it wastes the effort of the asker. It is a punishment because although ArtOfCode claims "reopening is just as easy," surely even he cannot reconcile that claim with his simultaneous claim that the protem moderators are swamped with work and must pare questions preemptively to keep their heads above water. If that is true, then it is in fact not easy to get such a busy person to come back to review your question. A review of the time it takes to get your question reopened, compared with the typical time it takes to get a question answered, ought to shed light on that.

Commentary suggesting edits is a much better way of doing things than preemptively closing them. There is no real downside to letting a question which needs an edit sit around for half a day until the edit can fix it - and given the user, high-rated users, and mods can all edit questions, it is much, much more likely to get swiftly resolved than when a question is closed and shall remain that way, irrespective of any edits, until a mod remembers to review it again.

When 11 out of 15 questions are on hold, that is indicative that something we are doing is drastically wrong. Tweaks and "better efforts" from our moderators are not going to be enough to fix the problem. We need to change the way we do business, or change the purpose of the site completely. It's obvious there's quite a need out there, given the questions we do get, but we are currently not helping those people. Indeed, on several occasions I have personally seen mods tell those people that they have no idea where they could get their question fielded. That sucks, doesn't it?

Right now we are not a very helpful site; basically the rules as they are reduce us to glorified salespeople/product reviewers, and we aren't allowed to assist people with hardware troubleshooting - yet there is nowhere for those people to go. Those people are sometimes redirected to Super User, but that's a broad community with no special expertise in hardware troubleshooting.

I don't personally have time or the inclination to go on Area 51 and propose a hardware troubleshooting site, but anyone who could succeed in creating a hardware troubleshooting exchange on Area 51 and get it into beta would have the makings of a much more successful site than this one on their hands.