The moderators feel any question that can have discussion should be closed. They just want one right answer, anything with multiple is bad by their definitions.
So if you are getting discussion, you are actually just experiencing the common case of getting your needs addressed before the terrible moderation kicks in and closes good content.
This is also incorrect. There can be multiple answers, there just should not be dozens, or hundreds. The dozen case is where you start to see that the question isn't a question, but a discussion.
But sometimes that is also exactly what a programmer looking for information needs.
It happens quite often that I look up something that I already have (or could write) correct working code for. It's when I notice that there's more than one way to write that code, and I want to do it the "right" way the first time, so the decision doesn't come back later and bite me, when I go out looking for what is considered "best practices" in such a situation.
Usually there's more than a few "correct" answers to what is considered the best practice, and the choice depends on the context of your problem. That is when the discussion is invaluable, without it I cannot determine which of the choices apply to my problem.
But of course it's your fair right to say "well okay, but SO is not intended for that".
The moderators feel any question that can have discussion should be closed. They just want one right answer, anything with multiple is bad by their definitions.
That's not very smart. Sometimes, even a technical problem's context can be complicated enough to merit several different "good" answers, depending on other factors.
Maybe someone should formulate a law -- over time, any site's moderation starts to suck. There are factors involved with this, such as depletion of low-hanging fruit, popularity drawing more attention from spammers, and increasing workload of moderators.
That's surprising and disappointing - a lot of my value derived from these postings is from the discussions and the alternate answers / differing viewpoints.
Also confusing from the point of view of the site operators - aren't they missing a lot of site interaction and pageviews and additional free content, etc. ?
It's especially frustrating with questions about browser quirks or incompatibility, as these change from year to year. More than a few times I've searched Google for some obscure JavaScript thing and gotten a stale Stack Overflow answer with completely misleading info.
So if you are getting discussion, you are actually just experiencing the common case of getting your needs addressed before the terrible moderation kicks in and closes good content.