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IMO we should expect questions to have a single main point. Answers should address only that point.

If the answerer feels like they are introducing some new topic that the asker might not know - so what? People who read the answer (not just the OP!) can just search for that topic online or ask another question about it. Just don't be stealthy about introducing them - if there's searchable terms you can drop, do so.

If the asker has a bunch of tangents or confusions about things unrelated to the main point, he should be linked to other questions about those in comments. Once the confusion if dispelled, if there is no real question left, it can be closed. If there is still a main point remaining, the question should be edited to focus on that and answered succinctly.

We should not attempt to statically link half of all knowledge in every answer. It's far too much work to even read such answers let alone write them. People who come to QA sites don't have the patience to read a textbook, otherwise they'd be doing so.

* The 3 examples from SO in the OP are all XY problems.
    * "Why does "pip install" inside Python raise a SyntaxError?" - X is "what counts as valid Python syntax", Y is "how do I install packages"
    * "./xx.py: line 1: import: command not found" - X is "what is this bash syntax error", Y is "how do I run Python code?"
    * "'From/import' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file" - X is "what is this cmd.exe error", Y is "how do I run Python code?"
* The example from here IMO is begging the question. I submitted an edit to this to make it less chatty and more to the point, if that is accepted it would be a normal question, not a "beginner question". Btw beginner topic != beginner question, it's about style not topic.
* "trying to use Pip in the REPL" should be closed and linked to "how to use pip" and "how to use REPL".

>More broadly, where's the line between this site and Power Users, when it comes to fixing these elementary issues (where a new programmer needs a proper understanding of how the computer works before it's possible to start programming)?

Technically, the scope of "Power Users" is "everything you do on a computer". You can imagine how some of those questions would end up with a tag `coding`, defined loosely as "anything about doing X in Y programming language". For practical reasons, `coding` was turned into a separate site rather than a tag. There is no qualitative difference between the questions on either site.

The line should be this: If the question is about doing X in Y programming language, it should be on this site. If not, it should be elsewhere. If it's borderline (like pip commands), it should go on whichever site has more existing questions on that topic.

"Programming language" is used loosely here. So for example, JSON or HTML are not *really* programming languages, but it's the same idea (still "coding") so they should go on here.