"Deleting mediocre answers does not make the internet better unless in the presence of better answers" ... But then you have accepted and/or upvoted link-only answers which both encourage others to do the same and discourage/inhibit proper answers, making it a worse place overall.

Whichever way it gets closed, this is probably a case where merging is merited. Both answers are basically relying on the same Ubuntu Discourse post for all pertinent information.

So a post lacking focus about an off-topic release should be closed until both: the release is on topic and it has been improved to be more focused. There's nothing wrong with that

When a post can be closed for multiple reasons, and it has been closed, I have no problems with dealing with those reasons one-by-one until they are all resolved before the question is reopened.

Yes, I voted to close for the development release reason, because my request for a source for the claim about a change included in a development release went unanswered, and as I explained in that request, no changes are final till the release, so thank goodness a mod had the sense to close it until it became on topic

@BeastOfCaerbannog he definitely didn't respond to mine (until I asked for it again), which was for the source for the claim, so it's also not true that he was responding to requests.

"shouldn't they first just do a simple search like..." Nonsense, it's the question asker's responsibility to make the question as clear as they can, and especially given that OP is a "a well-known and active contributor" - they should be setting an example to new users by making posts as clear as they can in the first place. Their post as originally asked is definitely not something I would use as an example for anyone.

So this "something that could have been "resolved in a couple of comments" didn't actually get resolved until multiple comments and days later, which is why such questions should be closed - clearly without that "hassle" OP wasn't going to do anything.

"so he was evidently active. So he would surely respond to a request for more details" it took a repeated request and multiple days before he actually added the source article in response to request, so being active clearly didn't mean squat here.

As for naturally scrolling off, I don't see what benefit such posts gain from that limelight while so waiting - as I have noted, the tendency is generally for downvotes to pile on, so are you saying you'd like to encourage heavy downvoting of such posts even further?

There's definitely an implication there that hiding the question from the homepage somehow prevents you from referencing or upcoming answers to it. Neither of those are the case, and the way you have written it will definitely make people who are not familiar with site mechanisms think that this hiding is preventing you from doing either. The same goes for various comparisons made by kos as well - the way these answers are written, it's as if the posts are being deleted, instead of merely being hidden from literally one page on the entire website.

1. Then the way you say "(a) at least seen by folks so that they can reference it in the future, (b) probably upvoted as well" is patently misleading, since the posts can be referenced in the future and upvoted as well. 2. It takes time to get to -8. Plenty of time on a low-activity site like ours.

Again: 1. these posts are only hidden from the homepage. They're still visible on "the general questions list, tags pages, search results, user profiles, etc., etc.". So people can still reference and upvote and edit and do pretty much anything else they might be able to do with posts. Posts which are featured still appear on the sidebar. 2. A heavily downvoted post appearing on the front page does so at the expense of one which is less downvoted, and given how long posts are sticking around now, they'll be there for months. How is that justified?

And for most users, those posts wouldn't be something they'd miss anyway. (Except maybe to pile on the downvotes even more.)

Put behind just a barrier, but as I said, still freely visible on "general questions list, tags pages, search results, user profiles, etc. etc."

That's even more of a reach than calling this censorship. Shadowbanned posts usually can't be seen by anyone except the posters and moderators. These posts are visible in the general questions list, tags pages, search results, user profiles, etc. etc., except just the homepage.

If a question would have been shown on the home page but was hidden due to this, it's just two clicks (even one, depending on the settings) away: sidebar -> questions. How is that not enough transparency?