I think the issue is that the mechanisms of MO support two very different types of question/answers. I strongly support that technical, research-level questions include lots of background --- what OP is thinking about, what they've tried. This helps the answers better match the question, and helps the rest of us listen in.
But in a big-list CW question, I think it's better for OP to write not very much, and leave their own contributions as separate answers, one-answer-per-answer style. Otherwise there's this funny thing where the let's-sort-answers-by-votes thing can't get OP's contributions off the top of the list.
I don't know if there's much those of us over here on meta can do, except try to influence the culture --- I don't think that all these non-technical questions should be closed. One possibility is that, as the question is CW, I'm perfectly allowed to edit the question and move the contributions to answers. I think I will do that for one of the questions I linked to. But I don't know how else to effect a larger change.
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