The expectation of feeling welcomed is part of the problem. Is stack overflow an information sharing community or a social community? Is it wikipedia for programmers or reddit?
The fact that most people don't comment at all indicates that most people want it to be a wikipedia for programmers. Some people want it to be a social community.
Wikipedia is a social community too, as soon as you do more than reading articles. And has well-documented issues in that regard, which limit its quality and who contributes to it. That's not the dichotomy you think it is.
Even if it is a Q&A site where most users are read-only, it's still very bad to be sending the signal to the lurkers that if you ever ask a question, there's a high chance you're gonna get shat upon.
Wikipedia can be pretty hostile to new users as well (especially in languages with fewer speakers). Some people think they own articles and are very territorial about them. The result is that domain experts are scared away while the prolific editors are those who are good at arcane formatting rules, editing conventions etc.
Comments
The expectation of feeling welcomed is part of the problem. Is stack overflow an information sharing community or a social community? Is it wikipedia for programmers or reddit?
The fact that most people don't comment at all indicates that most people want it to be a wikipedia for programmers. Some people want it to be a social community.
Wikipedia is a social community too, as soon as you do more than reading articles. And has well-documented issues in that regard, which limit its quality and who contributes to it. That's not the dichotomy you think it is.
Even if it is a Q&A site where most users are read-only, it's still very bad to be sending the signal to the lurkers that if you ever ask a question, there's a high chance you're gonna get shat upon.
Wikipedia can be pretty hostile to new users as well (especially in languages with fewer speakers). Some people think they own articles and are very territorial about them. The result is that domain experts are scared away while the prolific editors are those who are good at arcane formatting rules, editing conventions etc.