weird I just came across the link... they bury this stuff real deep

@DaveTweed My point was exactly that it looks highly unbecoming. If normal users answer a question and then join the close vote this is already frowned upon. You're saying "this question isn't good enough, improve it!" But at the same time you find it worthy of an answer. Which in the case of moderators doing that then rightly raises questions like the meta post by the OP about moderators harvesting points by answering and effectively blocking anyone else from answering.

@Asmyldof That still doesn't make any sense. Closing the question and blocking others from answering has exactly zero effect on my own reputation point total. I just wanted to leave an extended comment that was too large for a comment block (a common occurrance), but since you have a problem with it, I'll just delete it.