Stack Overflow doesn't care if you say Thank You

As I hit 20k reputation on Stack Overflow, I felt it was appropriate to voice some of my opinions on behalf of this community that I have become entrenched with.

One of the oft heard impressions I'm left with by many people in the programming community is that Stack Overflow is full of bullies. It's a reputation that the site has worked hard to mitigate, but one that persists nonetheless. And yet, those same users continue to frequently use the site because it is consistently useful (how else would they know there were bullies). Minimally, we could at least say that Stack Overflow was full of helpful bullies, but I don't know many high school bullies that stole your lunch money only to buy you an apple with it.

When I hear friends complain that users on Stack Overflow are jerks because they won't help users who are "just trying to do something very simple", I feel discouraged. Because people who could be useful allies to the community are leaving or not participating for the wrong reasons. It paints all Stack Overflow users and moderators with a single brush. I can tell you, from personal experience, donating thousands of hours to help explain programming to new users, that I don't do so just to harass noobs, but instead work out of a genuine desire to help people. Furthermore, I don't think I'm alone in that regard. Most users I've encountered there have been very sincere in their desire to help people and work hard to explain difficult concepts. That's why Stack Overflow is the way it is.

So if most people on SO are nice, why does everyone else think they're not? #

• Stack Overflow doesn't care if you say "Thank You"

• I enjoy helping people - to do so effectively, that can't be scoped to just the individual asking the question. If you want one-on-one paid support, you can use a service like AirPair. But if you want to solicit help for free, that comes with an obligation to at least try to make your question useful for future travelers. Something in my web site or project doesn't work. Can I just paste a link to it?

• Stack Overflow is useful because it has content policies. Getting people who are unfamiliar with the site to comply with those policies causes friction.

• Sometimes things feel bad when they are really just neutral. It takes some getting used to or a little bit of a tough skin.