Extended comment:

I agree with the sentiment expressed by [Catharsis][1] that the site is overmoderated (e.g., long comment threads about clarification, and mod-edits instead of user-edits), though I do think most of the questions closed are completely justifiable.

I'm not in favor of a "research-only" site, but a big problem I see with this site is that it's fairly easy for anyone to come up with a question without ever having taken a cogsci class before-- which leads to lots of underinformed and poorly research questions.

Imagine if 25% of the questions on Stackoverflow were written by people who have **_never programmed before in their life_**. It would be a complete mess. On occasions, that's what I feel like this site has looked like. There's a significant amount of questions by people who have no knowledge of the field. This leads to extremely vague questions, in which it's a) difficult to understand what's being asked or b) needs an entire book to answer.

Whether we want to close questions for being "too basic", or edit questions for being too "vague", _we run into the same problem_. I guess what I'm saying is: changing the target audience really doesn't fix the problem. 


  [1]: https://cogsci.meta.stackexchange.com/a/228/55