People do come here at the ends of their ropes, meaning they don't know where else to go. Often in that many words - and yet we nuke their questions with the "clarity" reason because they "didn't show research effort".
IMHO it's OK to ask a user to do more research or update the question in a comment - without downvoting the question. This is what I prefer to do.
Closing a question is a hostile action regardless of intention
I think the more popular Stack Exchange sites should have more than 5 votes needed to close a question. Stack Overflow probably should be at 10.
Let's consider the case of a random Google user who encountered a useful answer here. They find a well-written question, a solution that completely solves their problem. What will their first instinct be? Thank the person who made it!
I wish there was a socially-acceptable kind way of really getting people to understand that a "thank you" isn't necessary. Upvote=thanks.
I think it's right to suppress this and don't agree that it's harmful.
What makes Stack Exchange great is a laser focus on it being a Q&A site.
People need to understand it's a Q&A site and if you are not Q'ing or A'ing, use the chat. This is not a forum. This is not us trying to be mean, this is us just trying to develop and maintain a good repository of knowledge. I want to add this focus is what makes this a good place for answers and doesn't degrade into meme-drivel like other sites.
When I search for answers on Google I want answers, not conversation. This isn't a place for chit chat. This isn't a social network. Go to a forum, Facebook, Twitter, whatever else for that. Stack Exchange has a chat facility, if you want to chat, use the chat.
As an aside, IMHO the top-level Stack Exchange Meta is real bad about blurring the lines between Q&A and chat and I think it harms the site overall.
This being said, I will not bite a new user's head off who is doing this accidentally. I'll tell them in a comment what they are doing wrong in a kind manner and ask them to delete their comment.