On the other hand, there's the problem of communities that are too forgiving to newcomers. Reddit post-digg-migration is a perfect example of a community that should've been tougher on newcomers. Instead, we were all too busy basking in our own popularity before we realized that it was too late to educate millions of new redditors on proper rediquette. I think SO has struck a good balance of not being too loose on rules but also not scaring off newcomers. (And today, there's programmers, workplace, UNIX etc. StackExchanges for anything off-topic anyway).