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Let's first consider the side of those who have a question.

If you have a question, you want an answer. Now there are two ways to get an answer: You find that someone already asked what you want to know, and someone already answered it, and the second one is that you ask yourself. The first case is the best case, but that requires that the question you seek for is not drowned in a flood of irrelevant questions.

Also, if you do ask a question, you want an answer. That requires someone willing to give you an answer. If you are constantly being asked the same question over and over again, of if the answer would be found with minimal effort by yourself, the experience for those answering will be exhausting and frustrating, and they will no longer be willing to give answers. But what is the worth of a question if nobody answers it?

An important thing to consider for a Q&A site (and, frankly, any place where people provide something for free) is that you are not entitled to anything. In the case of a Q&A site, you are not entitled to get an answer to a question. Answers you get are a gift, and everyone is free to give or not give that gift.

If you are asking, you are not just affecting what answer you get, but also what answers others will get int he future. Both people who will have the same or a similar problem, and people who will have other problems and want to find people willing to answer them; the latter includes you in the future, BTW. Therefore the imperative here means that you should ask: How should I ask if I want everyone to have a good experience with the site? This includes both people who will ask in the future, and people who answer the questions.

This in particular means you should put effort in your question. Effort to help those who might answer it, effort to help those who might have a similar question in the future so that they can profit from finding yours and the answers to it, and effort to help those that will be asking in the future.

Asking a good question is not easy. Indeed, sometimes it can be harder than writing a good answer. But you are profiting from all those who asked good questions before, both by finding ready answers to questions you have that others have asked and answered before, and by them nurturing an environment where people are willing to write good answers to your new questions.

Another point to consider is whether this is the right place for your question. You might think, of course it is, after all it is a question about that topic. But if the question is too specific, it may be better both for you and for the site to ask on a forum instead.

Next, let's look at those answering questions.

Again, the answers they give will affect not only the one who asked the question (that part should be obvious), but also to the general users or potential users to the site. Obviously those who answer should do their best to actually help the asking person. But that's not the only consideration, they should also have in mind those who might come across the question in the future and have similar, but not identical questions. Therefore when answering a question, you should not just try to give the information the questioner needs, but also to make the answer as general as possible without jeopardising the goal of helping the immediate asker and without going off-topic.

Now, like with asking a question, there's also the decision whether you should answer at all. The first consideration is, of course, whether you can actually give a helpful answer. An unhelpful answer not only doesn't help the asking person (obviously), but also decreases the value of the site as a whole, as future visitors seeking help will also find those unhelpful answers, and then might turn away from the site as a whole, while otherwise they might have become valuable contributors.

A probably more controversial topic is whether you should answer a question that you think should not have been asked on the site to begin with. On one hand you might argue that answering those questions might encourage the asking person to participate more on the site, and then learn about how to ask better question. On the other side, answering bad questions may encourage asking more such questions, which in turn would decrease the value of the site, both for future seekers for answers, and for future potential providers of answers.

Finally, let's look at the curation of the site, things like deciding whether to close or reopen a question, or maybe even delete it.

This is probably the hardest decision, but the easiest to describe in this context: The whole point of site curation is, after all, to make the site better. That is, quite obviously for every curative decision, the question is whether the positive effects outweigh the negative effects (and most curative actions will have negative effects due to their nature). That is, the imperative here says "if everyone would apply those rules when curating the site, would that make the site better?"