<p><em>[Posting an answer myself to enable people to vote.]</em></p>

<p>By now <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/193990">Approximate $e$ using Monte Carlo Simulation</a> became CW as well. I think that making such questions CW is an unfair, unreasonable, and harmful policy.</p>

<ul>
<li><p><strong>This policy is unfair.</strong> If @Aksakal posted his (by now accepted) answer first, it could have been upvoted and accepted by the OP without many other answers appearing. Most likely (see comments above) the thread would not have been converted to CW in this case and @Aksakal would get his well-earned reputation. As he posted it after a flurry of other answers, the thread has become CW and he will not get his rep points. This is unfair.</p>

<p>Also, the amount of reputation depends on <em>when</em> the thread will end up being converted to CW, because the points earned before that moment are not retracted. There are answers with 100+ upvotes in popular non-CW threads that should  be CW according to the strict interpretation. Converting them now leaves this 1k+ rep points with the answerers. Other similar threads were converted to CW much earlier. Equally good answers did not earn any rep there. This is arbitrary and unfair too.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>This policy is harmful.</strong> We have reputation system for a reason. Making the thread CW takes away large part of the incentive to put effort into providing new or into improving existing answers. This is a <em>huge</em> disadvantage.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>This policy is unreasonable.</strong> There is no reason to turn this question into CW. There is no StackExchange policy that prescribes doing it. The whole CW concept is outdated and <a href="https://stats.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1594/28666">"largely deprecated"</a>: it is not possible since 2010 to post questions as CW; automatic conversion of answers to CW was discontinued in 2014; <a href="https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/11740">What are “Community Wiki” posts?</a> meta.SE FAQ does not say anything to this effect; <a href="http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/04/putting-the-community-back-in-wiki/">Putting the Community back in Wiki</a> 2014 SE blog post only says that</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>a question attracting <em>very</em> large numbers of partial answers can be a sign of a topic that wants to be a wiki</p>
</blockquote>

<p>with "very" being in italics in the original. The approximating-$e$ question has 5 answers; that is not a "<em>very</em> large number".</p></li>
</ul>

<p><strong>I think we are being pedantic in following an outdated and detrimental policy and should seriously re-think it.</strong> And we are not even following it consistently.</p>

<hr>

<p>My suggestion is to use CW status only for "big list" questions like the ones about jokes or quotes -- the ones that are essentially off-topic and are only here due to their "historical importance".  Note that the answers there usually do not require much effort and so it is not too bad if they do not count towards reputation. In contrast, new on-topic questions that invite substantial answers requiring effort to compose <strong>should not become CW.</strong></p>

<hr>

<h3>Update to clarify</h3>

<ol>
<li><p>Anybody who thinks that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/193990">Approximate $e$ using Monte Carlo Simulation</a> should be CW please explain why <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/194352">Why does the number of continuous uniform variables on (0,1) needed for their sum to exceed one have mean $e$?</a> should not. <em>[@Silverfish makes an attempt in the comments.]</em></p></li>
<li><p>Anybody who thinks that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/165">How would you explain Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) to a layperson?</a> should be CW please explain why <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/18058">How would you explain covariance to someone who understands only the mean?</a> should not.</p></li>
<li><p>Anybody who thinks that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/2492">Is normality testing &#39;essentially useless&#39;?</a> should be CW please explain why <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/53">PCA on correlation or covariance?</a> should not.</p></li>
<li><p>Anybody who thinks that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/194035">When (if ever) is a frequentist approach substantively better than a Bayesian?</a> should be CW please explain why <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/577">Is there any reason to prefer the AIC or BIC over the other?</a> should not.</p></li>
<li><p>Anybody who thinks that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/5026">What is the difference between data mining, statistics, machine learning and AI?</a> should be CW please explain why <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/665">What&#39;s the difference between probability and statistics?</a> should not.</p></li>
<li><p>Anybody who thinks that <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/1595">Python as a statistics workbench</a> should be CW please explain why <a href="https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3392">Excel as a statistics workbench</a> should not.</p></li>
</ol>

<p><strong>The border to me appears <em>so</em> vague and <em>so</em> arbitrary that the only consistent solution that I see is to remove it.</strong> Substantial &amp; answerable questions should not be CW. My suggestion is that all the above listed questions should not be closed and not be CW.</p>

<p><strong>In addition, CW status is obviously not being used consistently (most glaring are examples 2 and 6), which creates massive unfairness.</strong> It is not some peanuts of reputation that we are talking about. These are often threads with 100+ upvoted answers, i.e. we are talking about ~1k reputation being given or taken. The <em>only</em> way to make the situation fair is to remove the CW status (it does not work the other way round).</p>

<p>Having said that, I can see <em>some</em> argument for making the Frequentist-vs-Bayesian question CW because of its holy war topic. I disagree with this argument but I can see it. If this is the community's standpoint then I propose an intermediate solution that <strong>at least all non-holy-war questions listed above should not be CW.</strong></p>

<p><em>(I would encourage anybody who posts an answer to defend the current CW practice to comment on all the examples above.)</em></p>
