You wrote a very similar post on Outdoors meta. All of this seems related to that one specific community. Network-wide, the amount of expertise is incredibly varied from community to community. Lack of voting I would imagine is directly related to site activity overall, or perhaps unclear scope. As for rudeness, that seems to be some personal conflict and it's fairly subjective what people consider rude. We have the "be nice" code of conduct, which is intentionally vague or rather refers to common decency. In general I'd probably boil it down to: don't speak to someone at the site in a way that would be considered rude if you spoke to them like that in person. Overall I think that Codidact is a friendlier place than for example SO and SO meta.

Btw regarding expertise, someone could be a hardcore survivalist expert and not knowing what an "ursack" is. Everyone doesn't live in USA - the fauna is very different across the globe. Sure, if they don't know what it is, they should probably refrain from commenting or answering, but on the other hand there is no tag in said question indicating locale. Speaking of rudeness, implicitly assuming that every question is about USA and that no other country in the world exists is kind of rude, you know...

@Lundin For me this applies to why I stopped asking on Photography, Cooking, and Outdoors so better here than than copying the same post 3 times.

If it friendlier here, then there wouldn't be users getting suspended on Se and deciding that instead of changing their behavior, they decided to come here as a direct result of the suspension.

Charlie Brumbaugh‭ Accusations like that with no proof or context offered aren't very friendly either. Sure, we shouldn't name & shame nor start any lynch mobs on meta... but perhaps the root of this supposed rudeness problem is that you feel that there's no good way for moderators to escalate such issues. On SE there is the option to poke a CM and then "Big Brother" will settle things. We had this ambitious project of creating an Arbitration & Review Panel , I think it was a great idea but it was put on hold. Having a panel like that would also unload unnecessary stress from the admin team.

@Lundin I can prove it with links but a part of the SO code was not to name specific users in meta posts, so I am refraining.

Charlie, you keep going on about this, but your idea of rudeness is apparently quite different from the norm. It seems you don't ever want to say anything negative about anyone. That's neither realistic nor useful. Some people do need to be told that what they are doing is wrong. And, a user simply suggesting that explaining "ursack" or "lithophane" when those are central to the question is not rude at all. It's actually a good suggestion, but one you can simply ignore if you don't agree with.

Asking about something quite niche, like ursack or lithophane without at least a simple sentence explaining them can be seen as arrogant (and thererfore rude) to casual visitors. Someone that doesn't know what these things are already will probably not answer the question, but they will also be alienated and may never come back. It kindof says "If you're so stupid that you don't even know what an ursack is, then this site isn't for you. Run along now and stop interrupting the grownups.". That's not the message we want casual visitors to get. Since the solution is just a single sentence describing the obscure thing, with maybe a link, it's something any post author should at least consider. Suggestions to add such information are certainly not rude, and should not be deleted.

Charlie Brumbaugh‭ I actually find myself agreeing with Olin Lathrop‭ here. Consider the initial revision of this question over on Judaism, which was just plain confusing for someone who is not already familiar with Judaism. A simple edit later, the question is now much more accessible to a general audience. Without a prompt for that edit, there's a good chance it never would have been made. While I agree that something like "what's an ursack?" in isolation might not be the best possible way to make such a request for clarification, even that alone still points to a potential issue with a question that should at least be considered on its merits.

Asking to explain a specific term is not necessarily a sign of lacking expertise. Many (most?) users are not native speakers, they simply might know the stuff under a different name -- that's even more true if the term is just a brand name.

@Canina I barely understand any of the terms on the Judaism site and those I do need some mental translating, that doesn't give me a right to demand that the askers there explain their terms. If I don't understand something I can either ask a question or Google it.

To put it another way, would "What is an Ursack" be fine as a standalone question or would people be complaining that the OP didn't do enough research?