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No. Closing is an integral part of maintaining this knowledge repository. If a question isn't up to our standards, it doesn't belong here, and closing is the first step in ensuring that. If a question doesn't meet our standards, it shouldn't have been posted at all.[^1] Closing is our way of letting people repair a question, something that deletion would've made far harder. When a question has been edited to meet our standards, it's supposed to be reopened. Leaving a question open while it's unfocused or unclear allows answers to it; something which doesn't make all that much sense. And if answers are posted at that time, we now have more problems.

The problem is that you view closing as the end of the world. It's not. Deletion is. Well, even that isn't the end of the world, because questions can be undeleted. Although the visibility is so low that's unlikely to happen.

> Instead, use comments and edit suggestions to work with the asker and help them improve the question

Then do that. There's no purpose in closing a question if the ones responsible for having it closed were able to edit it to fit the standards. But that's not always the case. Demanding that the question is not closed because it's fresh, doesn't actually help the case either. If a question _is_ closed, that's a sign to both the author and others that an edit is needed. We don't close questions just because it's a _little bit_ ambiguous or confusing (I hope).

> They also need help **understanding what they even should ask about**. IMO it is unfair, unreasonable, unrealistic, unproductive and unduly elitist to refuse to provide help with the latter.

No, it's not. Codidact is not a helpdesk. 
That said, if the author is willing to improve their question to meet the standard, nothing prevents you from helping them do so, by the means of editing and commenting. 

> I've heard the retort of just using the process, editing, commenting, then flagging to reopen - I've tried this many times on Stack as well. It doesn't work because it introduces too much overhead. As an expert, I often want to use CD in short bursts. Maybe I'm on a coffee break and want to quickly answer a question or two. An expert can answer many newbie questions quickly in this way. But if I have to submit an edit, flag, wait for the mod to see it, follow up to make sure it got reopened... 

That's actually a reasonable argument, and I find it more convincing than I want it to. However, I think that preventing question closure for new questions will do more harm than good. I don't yet have a lot of experience with this on Codidact, but I know from Stack Overflow that it would be very harmful. 

Question authors almost never repair their questions, because it's not in their interest; they use the site more as a helpdesk for themselves when posting questions, even though that isn't what the site is supposed to be. Unfortunately, the UX for posting a question makes it easier to use the site in this way; I'm not sure how we can solve that issue, besides moving the "ask question" button somewhere much less prominent. 

Closing a question upfront clearly marks it as not up to the standards. That's good, it means one post didn't go under the radar. But if we discover bad questions, then ignore closing them? That's counter-productive to curation, and puts more strain on whoever chooses to monitor the question for eventual closure. It's easier for the system, and curators, to close and reopen. The vast majority of questions don't get edited to meet the requirements, so it should be rare that you'd actually be awaiting a reopening.

Maybe there are other means of improving the process for answerers when they are able to edit a question into an acceptable form. I don't think preventing question closure is a good solution.

> https://software.codidact.com/posts/291046 - the question is a very reasonable one and part of a basic Python skillset. The asker is confused, and misphrased it. However, if you know the answer, it's not hard to deduce what they're trying to ask. I submitted an edit suggestion to this effect if anyone is curious. I would like to also post an answer, and I think that it will be a good and useful answer to people trying to learn this aspect of Python, but now I cannot because the question was closed, and who knows when (if?) it will be reopened.

That post is closed as "too generic", not "unclear". There are already two comments pointing out how it doesn't meet the standards. You want to post an answer to the question, but that's precisely what you're not supposed to do. If you think it's been closed in error, that's what you should focus on, not using it as an example for the request/discussion you made here.

> Another thing I observed is that when I was a mediocre programmer, I began to notice many people ask "bad" questions that were hard to answer because they are unclear. After I became a good programmer, I noticed that many bad questions I previously thought were unanswerable became easily answerable, because thanks to my greater skill and knowledge I was able to easily discern what the person meant to ask. This echoed the experience I had as a novice programmer, when the better mentors and teachers seemed to have an uncanny ability to figure out what I'm trying to ask before I could figure out how to phrase it myself, and this sort of Q&A was a great help in my own learning. 

I don't think this observation is an argument for your request. I don't really see how it makes a difference to how question closure works.

> Naturally, I strongly prefer participating in an environment where experts are considered to have a duty to not just answer questions, but also help newbies ask the questions.

Again, not relevant to question closure.

[^1]: I very much agree that we should allow people to collaborate at building up a question (or a whole Q/A) from the ground, but not by posting unfinished questions and then demanding they don't get closed.