Why the hate for the "context needed" questions list?

Question

I really don't get why people are so opposed to this question. I'm hoping someone can explain it to me.

First I asked whether, given the success of the previous posts which had a small selection of these questions, it made sense to have a place where we didn't try to keep the list short. That question got a net -8 downvotes (at least), with absolutely no comments. Clearly people disliked the idea, but no one cared enough to actually post an answer explaining why. (That question was eventually deleted - I don't know if it was a moderator or automatic.)

So I went ahead and created the question, and although it's not in the original form I had in mind, I think it's better for it. One question, one CW answer that anyone can add question links to, broken down by category. It immediately got at least 10 downvotes, which I can only assume came from people active on meta. It has since climbed up to positive 19, and got 15 "favorite" stars, which means almost twice as many people approve of it as disapproved. Yet it was closed as a duplicate of the memes question, and someone's attempt to go "Oh, it's a duplicate, lets move all the links over there" was reverted.

I find it mildly irritating that it was closed, and I've voted to reopen it, but that hasn't reached the threshold yet. In the meantime, while I wish it wasn't closed, it's not an inconvenience because there's no need to add more answers - it's just editing the existing one. But now it's managed to collect two of the four delete votes it needs to just vanish, and I still don't understand why people are so opposed to it.

Is everyone going to agree that all the question titles on the list are funny? Absolutely not. There's a few that other people have added that I looked at and went "Meh", and I'm sure that's true for everyone else. But I don't understand how the subjectivity of humor means that said humor should be so reviled in the first place. I don't find toilet jokes or "you mom" jokes funny at all, but I don't go around telling people they shouldn't tell them. And smaller versions of these lists have been really highly voted in the past. Aside from a short-term locking of the memes post, none of them have been downvoted like crazy, closed, and (as far as I'm aware) threatened with deletion.

So please - help me understand. What is it about this question that is provoking such negative reactions? Why not just leave it alone, if you don't find it interesting? A few comments on the question said things like "I don't see the point", and I can understand downvoting because of that, but after that, why not just move on?

Answer 1

I was one of the people who voted to close, and if I had the rep to do so, probably would have also been on the list to delete it.

I really like those question titles. I get a kick out of them all the time. And I sometimes visit the other meta post to see if I missed any good ones. But Meta does have a purpose, and while it may seem that SE or Arqade hates fun, we don't. We just need to make sure that meta is able to properly serve its function. And if we have an ever growing list of "funny question titles" that basically gets pinned to the top as people try to add their question to the list, then it starts to break down a little.

Every time you edit it, or add an answer, it'll get thrown back to the top of the front page, and get more attention. Which can be great for questions relevant to the site or policy, or guidelines or something, but for fun posts is actually bad. It adds to the noise of the system and potentially buries something that needs attention. And too many of these types of questions makes that worse.

With the format it is in now, the small list gets edited on occasion but not a lot. It has been edited about 30 times in roughly 3 years, which is high, but not crazy considering. And some of those edits happened in a row, so it didn't spend too much time on the front page. But if each of those answers is broken out into a question, and all of them turn into giant lists, meta becomes pointless.

So, basically, we like the fun. We want to keep it around. But we also don't want it to get in the way of being a useful site. And that's why we closed your question and deleted it. Those of us who have been around for a while and earned enough rep here to vote on the matter thought it might distract from being a good site. So we closed it. And I imagine it got deleted because the closed question got edited and put back to the top of the list again. The one question about memes and a small list of examples is more than enough to enjoy it without getting in the way. A giant list, however, would (and in my opinion is unnecessary).

Answer 2

For the record, I went to the Arqade chat and got my answer: It's a difference in opinion between casual users (who only have the ability to up/down vote) and the community of dedicated users (who have earned enough rep to be able to close/delete). The latter feel that there is no need for a dedicated list, that there's enough examples covered in the memes post, and that fun questions aren't as appropriate as they used to be but no one has cared to try and purge them.