I was thinking about this after reading [these great slide decks](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/12/building-social-software-for-the-anti-social.html) by Jeff Atwood, which reemphasized to me that SO is _not_ meant to be a forum or support site, and it _is_ meant to be not just a QA site, but something that generates general reusable articles.  

I think closing these questions is the clearest path for this site to survive and flourish.  The test needs to be not "would I like to help this person?" but rather "is having a page about this question going to be useful in future?"

I think AU needs a strong direction or consensus on this otherwise there may be pushback that it's unhelpful or negative to close a question when the person's clearly having trouble.  Perhaps just closing with a clear note will be enough.