> their number one criterion is "is it helpful (and civil)"? They don't care much about "is objective/it a good match for SE/constructive"
Then why don't they go to one of the million Q&A sites that don't have those restrictions? Oh, wait, is it perhaps because they don't have anywhere near as good content?
The very fact that out of SO's restrictions has emerged what is generally regarded as the best Q&A site that exists, might suggest it would be a bad idea to change it, simply because some people get upset that their questions suck.
There are other Q&A sites?! Quora and Yahoo answers has a different audience. Quora has an annoying sign-up policy and uses real names, and Yahoo made absolutely no effort in getting quality content. ExpertSexchange is dead and/or costs money, I don't know. I haven't found any others.
What I'm asking for is a site with the SE engine, where the most important criteria for posts are helpfulness and civility. Everything that is not helpful or not civil gets removed. People who are snarky and/or deletionist are not welcome there. If you apply these criteria, all the other "Q&A" sites fail.
It's not that yahoo and expertsexchange were full of "helpful and civil but not constructive answers", and failed because of that. They suffered from poorly-written, nonsensical posts.
Yes, there are a huge number of Q&A sites. You just listed three yourself. Others include things like coderanch, SDMB general questions, linuxquestions, etc etc
But all of them have flaws: of course they do. If you think your alternative SO will work so well, then set it up. I've no doubt you'll end up with massive pedantic arguments about what "helpfulness" means before you get beyond 10 users, but perhaps I'm wrong and you'll do to SO what it did to expertsexchange.
I just prefer that the existing SO doesn't get broken to the point of uselessness for the sake of experimentation with different posting criteria.
Then why don't they go to one of the million Q&A sites that don't have those restrictions? Oh, wait, is it perhaps because they don't have anywhere near as good content?
The very fact that out of SO's restrictions has emerged what is generally regarded as the best Q&A site that exists, might suggest it would be a bad idea to change it, simply because some people get upset that their questions suck.