As much as people love to rip on StackOverflow for being unfriendly, it is in an entirely different plane of existence from all the little php forums that it replaced.
You haven't seen arbitrary, shitty moderation unless you were on the internet in the early 2000s.
The craziest thing is, those people are almost all still on the internet, but they've aged out of the worst of the terribleness.
On the other hand you could switch communities if one style didn't suit your taste back then. It often seems like this was replaced by a choice between large communities like SO and something fringe.
You haven't seen arbitrary, shitty moderation unless you were on the internet in the early 2000s.
The craziest thing is, those people are almost all still on the internet, but they've aged out of the worst of the terribleness.