From the about page of Stack Overflow, "This site is all about getting answers." (And, yes, I will quote that until someone deletes it from the about page.) Anything that stands in the way of that is wrong. Period. That is simple, straightforward logic.

Currently, a very vocal part of the community thinks "getting answers" is sufficiently accomplished today the way things are done. That is good enough. And when other people, like the poster here, come along and say otherwise, the "very vocal" come out for the status quo.

Anytime Stack Overflow fails to get a question answered, even if the question is "unacceptable" as written, Stack Overflow fails: Stack Overflow failed to get an answer. Far worse than this, we drive away future questions that might well be "acceptable." So, this is an aggregate failure.

One of the very difficult skills in software is learning how to get help. The fact that some people are better than others is no excuse for slamming those who aren't. If Stack Overflow, as a community, wants to succeed, they need to foster this skill for the sake of this question and that person's future questions.

No specific waiting period before closing or allowing downvotes will work in fostering better. The poster might simply have to wait one day longer than the timeout. The real answer is that downvotes need to be made constructive instead of destructive and closing needs to happen after a serious process that fosters improving the question.

Unfortunately, these require work on the part of the community. This work has no reward in reputation, so very few take the time to do it. And by the time they can help, the damage is done. So, to allow these people who are willing to be the unsung heroes of Stack Overflow to work, we need to stop the flash-mob vote to close and downvoting and their derivative consequences.

As mentioned, we might change the boilerplate text to something more like, "This question needs help in the following way..." That does not bear the stigma of "closed: not a question," but those who feel better slapping that on things can go on thinking of that way.

We also need to make downvoting in those cases constructive. Downvoting encompasses too many things: "I don't prefer that" to "That sucks" (which is interpreted as "go away"). Also, as has been noted in several places, downvoting survives long after things may have been fixed -- which is grossly incompatible with "getting answers." The point was that at one time something deserved a down vote -- even if it is never reviewed later and holds what is now a perfectly good question as a "bad" question.

Unlike the standard setup of Stack Overflow, downvotes have no community arbitration and evaluation except for offsetting up votes. Up and down votes mean very different things. And downvotes need a real, serious community arbitration method to be consistent and useful. That also requires knowing why something is downvoted. You can flag many things for moderation / removal, but not votes. There is no check on abuse or relevance. This does not benefit getting answers.

We really need more vocal people who are interested in changes that benefit getting answers.

Another example: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17197193/modern-resources-for-effectively-mastering-mfc-quickly -- Please do not answer here as to what is "not constructive" about the question. It is irrelevant to this question. But two down votes and close of "not constructive" has done nothing to help improve the question. And, frankly, in the absence of information as to what the specific problem is, it reeks of censorship because it is about a library/toolset/technique/feature that is unpopular (which may be for very good reason) but still needed for real work within the domain of Stack Overflow.