The point is that if debate isn't allowed you aren't likely to have higher quality posters than the average for programmers. And the reality is that there are tons of lazy/stupid programmers out there that just want "plz email teh codez".

The forums that I have seen work best at maintaining abnormally high levels of quality posters are ones where the Q&A is effectively secondary to the debate. The reason is that the fun of debating keeps the high quality posters around and answering shitty/repetitive questions.