Every forum, no matter how its reputation/karma/power system works, is dominated by those who are willing and able to invest the most time into participating in

Every forum, no matter how its reputation/karma/power system works, is dominated by those who are willing and able to invest the most time into participating in the forum. As you and many others have noticed, it appears that the type of people who can and do spend dozens of hours every month answering questions or writing instructions tends to overlap with "insufferable pedants" to a very large extent. Thus I don't believe a forum that works the way you want can exist. The pattern you're observing is simply a reflection of the people that use the Internet today. By discouraging pedantry and by reducing opportunities to show off perceived intellectual superiority, you are effectively excluding the exact group of people who make tech forums work in the first place.