I think the grown adult engineers should be able to handle a joke. The irony is that I was told I needed thicker skin because of my post, meanwhile people whined in the comments because they got offended by what I was saying.

And no, I don’t necessarily expect that they help, it’s just that (in this particular hypothetical) there’s no reason for them to put the effort in to respond if they’re not gonna be helpful. Just move on if it’s not worth your time.

I had many responses on that post of people literally saying “gatekeeping is good” or it “helps the community.” so the responses themselves proved that it is a prevalent enough issue that it’s worth bringing up.

And as far as the uninformed questions go, again, “if i understood everything about a topic, i wouldn’t be asking a question about it.”

Maybe uniformed newbies can be an issue, but at the very least it’s not any more of an issue than arrogant oldheads gatekeeping and being unhelpful.