[ilaksh]

The worst part for me is when you ask a hard question and rather than admitting they don't know the answer they decide to close it because they think they have got you on a technicality about the validity of the question.

Or a similar variation, it's a hard problem, and they don't know, so they assume you are a complete idiot and ask you to verify things that were implicit in the question. Like, you said you did X and Y, and it's almost impossible to do those things without doing A and B first, but they give you this patronizing tone saying you should have done A and B first.

Here's another one: you write a decent answer to a question. Someone with a massive score comes along behind you an hour later and takes your answer and elaborates on it a bit. They get the upvote and check, you get a zero. The reason they got the points was because they spend all day gaming Stack Overflow and are happy to take advantage of any way to steal points and so have a high reputation.

I really feel like their data science team is not trying hard enough to find the dyed-in-the-wool pathological sons of bitches that are on Stack Overflow. There are plenty of them on there.

[throwaway2048]

The problem is the pathological users ARE the active, participating userbase, the site is built on their input to cater to them and their desires.

Its the same reason that online communities almost inevitably degrade over time, they optimize for the most active, loudest users above everything else, which is not necessarily the path to a better community.

[DeathArrow]

Still, there aren't alternatives on Stack Overflow. You either post there and hope your question isn't closed and it will get an insightful answer putting you on the good track, or you do some digging yourself until you get the answer, even if it's going to take a massive amount of time.