I'm having a hard time understanding the reasoning behind closing questions. Not that I think questions shouldn't be closed, but I do not understand the _reasoning and/or thought processes_ behind closing questions, and what it is we hope to accomplish by doing so. Obvious things like shopping recommendations we just plain don't want here. But what about things like this?

 - http://superuser.com/questions/456445/is-the-performance-of-a-cpu-affected-as-it-ages

 - http://superuser.com/questions/337311/how-are-commercial-dvds-burned (I've wondered this myself as a Super User when my DVD player won't take any DVD-R's)

 - http://superuser.com/questions/287375/what-is-the-origin-of-k-1024 (Good question, bad answers?)

 - http://superuser.com/questions/318724/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-solid-state-drive

 - http://superuser.com/questions/6538/how-to-run-mac-os-x-within-windows-virtual-pc

 - http://superuser.com/questions/27453/how-can-i-gently-explain-to-non-techie-friends-they-are-the-victim-of-a-hoax (clearly OT, but seems like it would be very relevant to many Superusers)

 - http://superuser.com/questions/29111/if-spaces-in-filenames-are-possible-why-do-some-of-us-still-avoid-using-them  ([Specific meta discussion here][1])

This is mostly just a run down the highest voted questions list and picking out a few that are closed (they were just handy for some quick examples), but I can't imagine we wouldn't want them on the site any more, would we? Surely the questions aren't closed just because they _can_ be, because they don't follow the rules.

I'm also a little confused about locking vs closing vs deleting. It seems locking or deleting are rarely considered. Many of the above questions would make more sense to me if they were simply locked.

 - What do we hope to accomplish by closing questions? 
 - Do we not _want_ closed questions here? 
 - What message does closing these questions (and other "questionable" questions) send?
 - How does this help the site?

Again, not trying to play Devil's Advocate or whine about questions being closed. I honestly do not understand the intent of closing a question.


  [1]: https://meta.superuser.com/questions/5673/why-was-my-popular-question-about-spaces-in-filenames-closed