"Caveat lector" means reader beware. I’m convinced that the stack exchange format is not a good fit for a subject such as Electrical Engineering.

While there are certainly some outstanding questions and answers, it is difficult for the uninitiated to determine which are the right answers. I think this arises from the fundamental problem that someone who is asking questions is likely not the best judge as to the correctness of the answer. This not the majority of the questions but I think it’s significant enough that it muddies the water sufficiently.

Make sure you read all the answers. And understand that there are low vote gems in the midst.

Remember that Electrical Engineering is a very broad and diverse subject. It encompasses ideas and concepts from signal processing to semiconductors through to quantum mechanics and abstract conceptualizations,.

Please don’t get me wrong, as there are some very talented and experienced people who have contributed a great deal to this site. However I’ve seen some of these same people give answers that are flat-out wrong, what I suspect is that these people are answering in an area of electrical engineering that they really know very little about and they make assumptions. The main problem here is that some of these higher ranked individuals have a following and their answers get up-voted immediately even when they are wrong. As a result there are number answers that are wrong but are the highest voted answer as well as being the accepted answer.

In technical matters, a democratic consensus means nothing. Mother nature is concise and cruel.

So it’s ironic that in an area that requires such fastidious attention to detail and that prizes analytical solutions to very high degree that we end up with a stack that has subjective posts.

Additionally, There is a culture of intolerance that has a very narrow definition of what electrical engineering is. Unsurprisingly, the proponents of this viewpoint really only see electrical engineering as part of what the questions that they can answer are. Unfortunately these attitudes have been embodied within the moderating team itself, when I have edited posts to remove certainly stereotypical and perhaps even mildly racist language I have been accused of being humourless. To quote a semi-famous person "it is 2016".

We’ve lost some brilliant contributors to this site … Partly because of this.

I am idling this account not to return. I won’t remove this account as I tended to have one of the highest up vote/downvote ratio, and I don’t want to damage the rep scores.

BTW, do look at the voting stats of people on the site. It can be revealing.

I’m not sure what the right answer is to these issues are, I do know that I don’t have the solution and as a result I’ve decided not to contribute any more.

So long and thanks for all the fish... for real this time.