stackoverflow needs tweaking

stackoverflow is a wonderful site. It's the first place I go when I have a question related to programming.

Unfortunately, I think it needs a few tweaks. My sample may be small, but lately (the last few months) I've been seeing too many cases where there was a cry of "Duplicate! Duplicate! Duplicate!" or even closing the question. That wouldn't be a bad thing if Question A was, 'What does "Error: Variable not defined" mean?" and Question B was, 'I got this error "Error: Variable not defined". What does it mean?"

The problem is that in many cases those voting to close are trolling rather than looking out for the site. In some cases it is probably just trolling by the immature, with too much time on their hands and too little common sense, but in others it is regular users having fun with power.

Here is one good example. The OP lists a couple of things he's been doing to debug his programs and asks for other suggestions. If that's not a perfect question for stackoverflow, nothing is.

Yet it was closed on the grounds that "We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion." Good chance that the trolls voting to close have never written a line of R code.

Here is another example. It was reopened, but as user Dan Burton wrote in his comment, "I checked the profiles of the 5 people that closed this, I'm rather appaled that none of them have made a single contribution to the scala tag."

By the standard that seems to be in place right now, even the question I started with, where the user gives an error message, should be closed. There are multiple reasons you might get a certain error message. That leads to opinions rather than facts, because you'd have to make a judgement about the most likely reasons for a certain error to occur in a given language. It might also be interpreted as a question not about a programming language, but rather what is wrong with the programmer's training that would make him arrive at that error message. (If you think I'm stretching things, dig around on stackoverflow and look at the closed questions.)

My goal, though, is not to talk about these specific cases. Maybe they are terrible examples - whatever. My point is that the same thing happens again and again, and it is creating a hostile environment, particularly for new programmers. It used to be that I could recommend stackoverflow for someone learning a language, but I've stopped. It is very discouraging to ask what you think is a reasonable question and then be subjected to a public flogging. (Even when the question is not closed, the answers are more harsh than a couple of years ago.)

Traditional trolling is bad enough, but at least you can delete or ignore those comments and get on with your business. This new-fangled trolling puts your own posts on the line, and the "closed" message is an official "you don't belong here" message, sent by stackoverflow.com, that the whole world can see. That's kind of hard to ignore, particularly if you used your real name.

Maybe one solution would be banning the close trolls for a week if they vote to close two questions in a 30-day period that are then reopened. Cries of duplication are not as easy to monitor, but they're more in line with traditional trolling, so I don't know that it is as much of a concern. Whatever the solution is, something has to be done to make the site friendly again.

Edit: Just came across this gem. Somebody named Michael Petrotta explained the reason for his vote to close: "@Jay: I was one of the people who voted to close. I thought you might be interested in my reasons. I don't program in C++, and I don't feel much, one way or the other, for the language or its adherents. I read your "question", and saw an attack on a project, with a lot of nasty name-calling. I read the answers so far, and saw a bunch of defensive, content-light replies. I didn't see any value in the question or its answers to date, and I voted to close."

So you've got someone who admits he knows nothing about C++, doesn't care about C++, and he's voting to close the discussion? And he's allowed to continue trolling?