Comment by burnished

EDIT: I removed quoted portions and snippy replies.

Forgive me if I wasn't being clear. It seems like your core point is that SO's rules are on the whole good for keeping it focused, and it seems like you are assuming I'm a beginner programmer who is frustrated with SO for not being more beginner friendly and thus advising me on what I should do instead. I feel like you are shadow boxing a little.

I think we probably mostly agree; I think SO gets an unfortunate reputation as a good place for beginners (as opposed to a sort of curated wiki of asked and answered questions on a topic, a data store of wisdom), and that in general beginners are probably best served by smaller 1-1 intervention. I usually suggest people seek out a mentor, it had never occurred to me that Discord could be a good way to go about this.

The original point I was trying to make is simply that you can see overzealous rule following on SO and that a form of that is in inappropriately closed as duplicate questions.