Interesting comment. I liken the debate that happens around a question that's been raised (perhaps poorly, by a newbie) to be similar to the Socratic method -- questions are answered by more questions in order to distill the matter at hand.

And if substantive questions are preceded by the meta-question "What do you mean?", that's OK -- I'd rather see how the discussion evolved (and what interesting side-arguments popped up) rather than have the heavily edited, almost unrecognizable question as the top post, because then then it suggests we have to go back and edit all of the replies as well.

And that's why it's my firmly held belief that when someone asks a question, they *shouldn't* be able to go back and edit their original question, because then the replies don't make any sense. It's important to leave history the way it was -- that way you can see what the question really was about. The asker has learned how to propose a question to the community (a meta-answer), and also something about Perl (an answer, or more likely, several answers, since TIMTOWTDI).

Regarding StackOverflow's ability to go back and edit stuff -- I guess that's a slightly different model, where it's a Q&A site that's also a wiki. Frankly, I like the way Perlmonks works the way it is.