I've been on this site for quite a while now, but there's something that keeps bugging me. This might sound a reminiscent of the reform of the whole StackOverflow site that happened a while back.
It seems like, with so many restrictions on what people may ask questions about, and what questions are considered "good", that many people really aren't getting the thought they deserve. For example, one fellow earlier asked some basic, but a bit naive questions about 2.8. Instead of being answered in a constructive way, or asking for clarification, this person was responded to in the comments simply with "Please put this in a bug report. We do not deal with experimental versions of Blender." This is just a drop in a much bigger ocean of... unhelpfulness that I see here. Now - I'm not saying commenting asking for clarification, or explaining nicely why the question is unconsequential is a bad thing. But,
It feels like some of this community's guidelines encourage pushing questions away, rather then answering them, which is the exact purpose of this site. In the previous example, why does blender 2.8 need to be completely shunned? Why shouldn't this fellow have gotten at least moment of our thought? There's nothing inherently wrong about many of the "don't do this" rules out there, and there are people who get rejected because of this. Obviously, some 2.8 questions are indeed out of our reach. But not all are, and trying to use 2.8 and being confused shouldn't make a user inherently less deserving of our help.
One of the things about this site that is attractive to this site, for newer users, is the quick and efficient way to get assistance and knowledge. They don't have to invest time into other, more thorough communities. I believe there's a beauty in that. But, a lot of people here don't have other places to ask. Many are working in isolation - except for this site, and YouTube videos. Nowhere else to go, nowhere else to ask. For a long time, I wasn't aware of other blender communities. This was it. And to see some people seen as rabble on this site, just because they don't know what's "appropriate", or have nowhere else to ask, is saddening.
So, how can this community be helpful to more people? Rules are good, and a necessary asset for any community. But I believe helping people should be priority, rather than using rules as an excuse to not help people who might have no other sources. For some of things, it would actually be faster to give a quick 4 word answer, rather than say: "I'm voting to close this as off topic because"
What are your thought's on this? Can we be a more positive community? Is there anything we collectively can do to become a more positive, inclusive, and helpful group?