[zahlman]

What "tone"? Why is it unreasonable to say these sorts of things about Stack Overflow, or about any community? How is "your questions and answers need to meet our standards to be accepted" any different from "your pull requests need to meet our standards to be accepted"?

[QuesnayJr]

It's hard to explain, but immediately clear to enough people that it explains why so many people aren't sad to see SO fall on hard times.

I get that there have to be some rules, but it comes across like you derive some sort of satisfaction in enforcing rules. Successful sites with user moderation start out with a big population of people who will tolerate the rules in order to participate in the goal of the site, but eventually they end up dominated by people who feel that the very act of enforcing rules is an important contribution. All of the talk of "community" comes across as a thinly veiled version of Cartman's "Respect my authority" from South Park.

[znpy]

You can’t see that, and that’s the problem.

The obnoxious tone and the assumption to be on the right side.

I’m so happy StackOverflow is dying :)

[samat]

Man, if this was irl, you'd be punched in the face or ostracized. That's a quick way to assess if your tone is right.

If you don't have a mental capacity to do that (nothing against you, some people are just born that way) — I pity you, but still, try to be 'helpful' over 'correct'. That's how civilization is built.

Wikipedia also have this problem, with moderators using some 'wiki-speak' jargon to 'win the comment battles'.