In this question's comments, @hippietrail commented
... on the subject of constructiveness, I firmly believe downvoting or closing questions asked in good faith in the earliest days of a new beta are not constructive ways to build the site. ...
(For my opinion, see my answer)
What do you think, guys?
I think it's possible that cultivate a high standard of questions and be courteous and welcoming even to those who ask poor questions, but it does require additional time on the part of power users to be willing to work with the questioner through comments and appropriate edits instead of dropping the closehammer.
A question posed in good faith deserves a good faith response, whether is an answer or a comment for clarification. Closing a question should not be used in place of asking for clarification, especially on a smaller SE, where the chance of abusive questions is low.
I personally have never to my recollection casted a close vote before having left a comment and given the questioner at least a modest amount of time (perhaps 1 hour if the question was just posted or 12--24 hours if the question was posted a bit of time ago) to work together to improve the question.
A close vote without discussion is a strong statement to make both to the questioner and to visitors who stumble on the site. I think that we should avoid it unless the questioner is unresponsive or there is mutual agreement that the question is unsalvageable.
I disagree with the opinion quoted in the question. On the contrary, I think in early days it is important to close inappopriate question, so as to define boundaries of what is and is not allowed. That question is not constructive and does not fit our Q&A system, so I voted to close. Whether the question was asked in good faith is not relevant. I don't think the poster should take it personally, that's just how our system works.
If it's a good question in intent but too tendentious or worded badly, edit and/or ask the OP to rewrite.
We want good questions early, and if they are salvageable (as I think the question in question is), we should make them better questions.
The thing is that besides voting questions down and closing them you can help guide the asker to fix what's wrong with the question to make it suitable.
In this case I couldn't really figure out what exactly the problem with the question was that was beyond repair other than that the topic of the "linguistics wars" is a controversial topic.
What was bad about it specifically? Why could it not be fixed?
I'm not against closing questions at all but I couldn't see what was constructive in this case.
One reason I don't like it in early beta is because it is seen as hostile, hurts peoples' feelings, and drives them away from the site. Many questions can be massaged into something good in a way that everybody is happy even if it didn't start out as a particularly good question.
It's much easier to determine whether a question is appropriate for this site than it is to determine whether the question was asked in good faith.
I believe that, in order to decide on this topic, we need to ask ourselves the following question: what is the purpose of this SE? Is it being a high-level reference for discussion? Is it stimulating people to think? Is it promoting socialization through interaction when dealing with same fields of interest?
I understand that parameters and organization is important to keep the system useful.
I just want everyone who reads this to think about the following statement: I guess we are all here to learn. Learning how to ask, learning how to answer, learning how to deal with people, learning how to make a decision... learning to have some patience, sometimes. Possibly the greatest of all is learning how to make the best out of a problem.
My best regards to all SE user!
