It's hard to make a balance between "anybody can ask anything" and "usable for professionals to quickly find the best solution". In my (many) years online I've

It's hard to make a balance between "anybody can ask anything" and "usable for professionals to quickly find the best solution". In my (many) years online I've seen a number of great dev forums becoming popular and then quickly becoming overwhelmed with newbie chit-chat and same questions asked over and over. And I don't mean there's anything wrong with it, it's a natural progress of things, there's always many more beginners at any given time so they overrun the space and that causes the level of discussions to water down. Of course beginners deserve their space as much as anyone else, if not more, but problem is that interests of those two groups don't overlap much, you just can't a balanced mix of newbie and advanced topics that both side will appreciate equally, it never works. I think it's the best (only?) solution to draw a clear line, make SO Start and SO Pro, and then relax the rules on the Start side, and make them more strict on the side meant for experienced users. And of course, don't tolerate assholes on either side. Just my $0.02.