This is the crux of the problem. You have a mod culture of mechanistic law enforcement and an apparent passion for punishing technical rule breaking.
The true rule should be: Is this question useful to people? Will other experts be able to provide useful back?
The rule most in need of context-sensitive, question-specific interpretation is the closing of opinion based questions. The number of useful, highly-upvoted questions closed for this reason is the evidence that something needs to change.
> The true rule should be: Is this question useful to people? Will other experts be able to provide useful back?
Exactly, and it's my understanding that this is very explicitly not the rule - moderators do not care if something is useful, they care only if it "fits the guidelines" - actually guidelines is not the right word, laws would be more accurate.
I would disagree with it being called 'laws', because in the general sense laws can be disobeyed on occasion, and regularily are (extremely minor traffic laws, such as using the horn while stopped, anti-tailgating laws, etc. are routinely broken here in the UK -- I don't condone it, but it does happen quite a lot). In some cases police have the discretion to ignore offences of some extremely minor laws in favour of using that time instead to catch proper criminals. Hence to me at least, that does not convey the right mannerisms.
Perhaps 'sacrosanct law' would be a better alternative? :D
The true rule should be: Is this question useful to people? Will other experts be able to provide useful back?
The rule most in need of context-sensitive, question-specific interpretation is the closing of opinion based questions. The number of useful, highly-upvoted questions closed for this reason is the evidence that something needs to change.