This is the root of SO’s design flaw: public shaming as a moderator tool. The main problems of SO’s model:
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Humans often simply don’t take kindly even to constructive criticism, especially not when given in public for the world to see.
Solve this by removing the question from the public eye and then give private feedback to the poster.
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Deleting posts “as slowly as possible”. Bad questions get slowly grinded down into the dust by down votes, comments, close votes, all in public, really rubbing it in. And even when it sits there with 5 close votes and -10 score, it is still published for everyone to see.
Solve this by giving trusted users privileges to instantaneously remove a bad question from the public eye.
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“Bandwagon moderation”. The first veteran user who encounters a bad question and are willing to help out often constructive criticisms with links to help pages etc. So far, so good - that initial polite comment is often all that’s actually needed. Yet we have subsequent users arriving later, piling on further comments as in the examples given. It stops being constructive and derails into what the poster might interpret as “you are bad”. And it creates a negative atmosphere for everyone stumbling over that post too.
Lots of such comments come from veteran users who are simply fed up by viewing the same endless flood of bad questions day after day. They actually don’t have much interest in helping the OP at all, they just want the crap question gone.
Solve this by not forcing regular users to view bad content, again by quickly removing such questions away from the public eye to a “quarantine” area.
SO’s “crap hugging” policy of “we must preserve and publish all the crap ever posted and polish it until the end of time” is harmful. Similarly, when a question is closed since it can’t be answered and needs to be corrected by the OP alone, it is senseless to keep on displaying that question to the public.
In addition, do not force users who just want to use the site to become moderators, by having a messy rep system that assumes that people with good domain knowledge automatically make good moderators as well. This simply isn’t true. A better reputation & moderator privilege system than the one at SO is needed.
I really think the above issues is what the whole “unwelcome”/“elitist” thing originates from. Simply don’t let new confused users clash with power user veterans who have no interest in helping new users. Let the veteran users and elected moderators who actually enjoy helping newbies handle it.
And if no enough such users are around, well tough luck, the question is removed from the public site and stuck in limbo. Provide help pages & meta forums so that newbies can help themselves when that happens. But at least the question isn’t stuck in a destructive public down-vote/close-vote/comment barrage.