Close it, and add a Historical Lock
BESW has made a fantastic case for closing the question, but I think we should place a Historical Lock on the post in addition to simply closing it.
The wording on the Historical Lock reads
This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here.
And I believe that applies to the post in question perfectly. The First bolded article is true: The question is not a good question. It's on topic, but in an unacceptable state. The second bolded article also holds, similarly formatted questions would also be considered unacceptable.
The case for a Historical Lock
According to the SE Meta the following should be taken into consideration when Historically Locking a post:
The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive,
For the reasons outlined by BESW the question is no longer fitting for our Stack.
The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature,
Despite the fact that the question is inappropriate for our format, the top-rated answer to the question is detailed, correct, and well formatted. There is important information in that answer, and it's a great resource for future users to have access to.
There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post,
I'm not an expert on this, so if someone with more familiarity wants to edit in more detail feel free
To my inexpert eyes, this post seems to fit all of the above criteria.
The post is contentious; e.g., it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once
This is the biggest miss we have for the Historical Lock: There isn't a lot of contention here. We seem to have a consensus that the question should be closed, and I don't see anyone railing against that, or confused by the reasoning. I have no real support for this point.
The Reasoning for the Historical Lock
Closing seems to cast the shadow of disapproval over the closed post. A closed post implies that it is incorrect, and not a proper fit for the site. It is considered unsalvageable as noted in the Flag description for "should be closed"
This question is completely unclear, incomplete, overly-broad, primarily opinion-based or is not about role-playing games as described in the help center, and it is unlikely to be fixed via editing.
A historically-locked post, however, means that the community on the Stack has simply changed, and the post was once appropriate, but no longer is.
Regarding the post in question, it certainly would certainly be put on hold as Too Broad were it posted today. However, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the post aside from the manner in which it was posed. Were it posted today, the asker would be encouraged to split the question in to several related questions instead of a single mega-question, each of the questions would receive answers, and everyone would move on happily.
Why not just keep it normally closed?
The main reason I don't think we should leave the post Closed in a conventional manner is that I think the post provides sufficient value (and has been accessed and cross referenced by enough different people/posts in enough different ways) that it should be held safe from deletion. When searching google the post appears prominently on the first page of my results, and is linked to by 5 other posts on our Stack. The mechanical difference between a Close and a HL seems to be that the post is protected from deletion, and I think that sort of protection is valuable on the post in question.
