Is it time to stop writing headlines that end in question marks?

It is also time to stop writing headlines that start with "How".

Recently, I was in a group, and it came up that we don't know why people join the organization and what they want to get out of it. So I asked, why don't we know these things? This question was met with emotional violence. I suspect that the reaction to interesting questions is a litmus test of the intellectual health of an organization.

Arguably, a natural reaction to a question that evokes a strong feeling is to take that as an attack. (Example: If the world was created in 6000 years, how did these seashell fossils get inside mountaintop rock strata?) Often, this natural reaction cuts off an opportunity to learn something interesting.

British journalist & political columnist John Rentoul is writing a book on this: Questions To Which The Answer Is No.

Since 2009 he has curated examples at http://blogs.independent.co.uk/tag/headline/

Whenever I encounter a rhetorical question in a headline or link, I assume the author is either going to reach some foregone and facile answer, or no answer at all.

In this sense, questions as headlines are not only linkbait; they're often the signs of worthless articles, usually consisting of regurgitated common sense, or else poorly distilled coverage of superior source material.

There are occasional exceptions, to be sure. But generally, if I can guess what answer an author is going to get to long before he gets there, he's wasting my time.

Yes.