This is pretty much par for the course at many (most?) fora; SO is just a particularly successful (and therefore also toxic) example. See also Wikipedia for lar

This is pretty much par for the course at many (most?) fora; SO is just a particularly successful (and therefore also toxic) example. See also Wikipedia for large scale shenanigans of this sort. I long ago stopped investing significant time and emotional energy contributing to knowledge resources for similar reasons, though it should be remembered that there definitely are positives to contributors beyond the altruistic (I never improved as much in my technical skills as when sweating under the public spotlight after foolishly committing to answer a "simple" question that turned into significant unpaid work). It's internet culture (and tribal and other social gatherings before that), not StackOverflow particularly; the toxicity and crappy behaviour have been with the net since the get-go and will continue as long as the socially undeveloped see an opportunity to display their "power" or suck the energy out of those more publicly-spirited.