I've noticed that the question

is up to about a whopping 47(!) answers (68 if you count the deleted ones), with the most recent one being on June 9th of this year.

I've noticed that some historical questions become locked from further answers, with a notice that users should just edit the existing content instead, like on the question Learning to write a compiler

enter image description here

Should the JavaScript closure question also be locked like this? Is it helpful to just let people keeping adding answers when there are already so many, or should we encourage users to improve the existing content instead of trying to add more answers?

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    Can't you leave it open until there is an answer that I can understand? – usr2564301 Jul 3 '14 at 19:05
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    @Jongware as I understand it, you can still edit answers on a locked community wiki, as shown in the screenshot above. There are already so many answers there, do you really want to look through another 68 of them to find what you want, or would you rather someone just edit the top answer to make it more useful? – user456814 Jul 3 '14 at 19:19
  • Ah -- so, if I find one missing ingredient in an answer that works best, it still can be added? Close, then. 68 answers is not really "useful" anymore. – usr2564301 Jul 3 '14 at 19:21
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    Could we close it as "too broad"? – gunr2171 Jul 3 '14 at 19:29
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    My main concern with this question is that the accepted answer has over 2000 upvotes, and it’s entirely undeserved, because the answer is truly terrible. The system has failed this answer: it should be deleted, not mindlessly upvoted. I have no idea what happened there. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 3 '14 at 20:25
  • @gunr2171 Hm, first I answered with a certain no. But after thinking it through, it is a quite good example of being too broad. It can have too many possible answers (and it has way too many) and one could write a book answering the question. It is an important topic, but maybe not the best for a Q&A format. – kapa Jul 4 '14 at 10:15

I don’t agree that it should be locked: it’s entirely on topic on this website. “Locked” only applies to old questions which are not on topic for this website by consensus, but which have garnered sufficient attention to justify their preservation.

This question should be protected (at the time of writing, it is).

Unfortunately, this question has also, from early on, gathered a number of very low quality answers, including the currently accepted answers, which stands at 2067 upvotes. This clearly doesn’t reflect quality – the comments are pretty unanimous (instead, it’s probably the effect of frequent linking, and self-reinforced upvotes by people who didn’t read it properly because it’s accepted).

If this question requires moderator action, it should be geared at low-quality answers, not the question as a whole.

  • It looks like at least one moderator has started taking out the trash. It's down to 47 answers from the 68 when @Cupcake posted here. – Dan Neely Jul 3 '14 at 20:45
  • @DanNeely no, not quite. You see 47 answers, but I see 68, because I'm over 10k rep, so deleted answers are included in the answer count that I see. I'll update my question to make that less confusing. Also, from what I can tell, there haven't been any recent answer deletions, the last one seems to have been February of this year. – user456814 Jul 3 '14 at 20:55
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    @Cupcake ahh, too bad. It definitely needs some tender loving burnination of answers by someone who knows javascript well. – Dan Neely Jul 3 '14 at 21:55
  • Also the original interesting question has been changed to a boring one over years of editing, which means the top comment also isn't relevant anymore. – laurent Jul 4 '14 at 2:23
  • @this.lau_ should it be rollbacked? – Templar Jul 4 '14 at 8:41
  • Agreed. The answers could use some pruning, but this doesn't seem like a good use for a lock. That would shut down all activity, which is too heavy-handed for an on-topic question. – Bill the Lizard Jul 4 '14 at 15:05

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