Notice: because this question has been generating off-topic comments, let me make this clear: this question is not about discussing claims that Stack Overflow culture appears to be "rude" or "negative". This question is about what to do with other questions and rants that seek to do just that.
A disgruntled user just posted this rant on Meta a few minutes ago:
Why does the Stack Overflow community seem to be so rude?
Okay, so I have been a programmer for 20 years, but I'm still learning newer languages, I know it says for professional and enthusiasts but still, the questions I ask aren't that easy to solve. Before I ask a question I always search the internet for answers, and if I don't find it, I ask it on Stack Overflow.
However, people start going off topic and just tell me rude things and joke about me. I know that's a general internet problem and really I could not care about it, but on websites like MacRumors people are nice.
Typically you'll see someone reply with, "Why would you want to do that? You're doing it wrong. Do it this way, here's how."
These replies infuriate me. I know what my problem is and I'm asking for an answer. I don't need a new problem to solve. I don't need to know what your opinion is about the code.
Several users soon closed it as a duplicate of the (infamous) Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late?.
In my opinion, that other question is just another rant, and although it has some reasonable answers, none of them really seem to be definitive to me. Well, maybe Shog's is, but it's not the accepted answer, nor is it the top scoring answer...ranting users are unlikely to bother to find it—"Too long, didn't read".
Should we really be closing a question like the one above as a duplicate of Why is Stack Overflow so negative of late? Is it productive and constructive for us to block off any chance for personalized answers for future disgruntled users? Is it helpful?
I don't know, I'm not sure, that's why I would like to open this up for discussion.
Note also that we always have the option of closing rants with the following instead:
This question does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community. If you have encountered a problem on one of our sites, please describe it in detail. See also: What is "meta"? How does it work?
...but I ask again, is it helpful to us, and other users, to do so? We could attempt to address a disgruntled user's rant through comments alone, but the Stack Exchange platform isn't really designed to support comment-based discussions very well.
Opportunities to educate misguided users
So this user's particular question actually originated on Meta Stack Exchange at first, where he received the following replies in the comments:
The rudeness is directly related to your perceived unwillingness to spend the time to read our community posting rules first; as your questions, while they may not have been bad per se, were blatantly off topic here. Then, if you will not read and follow our rules, you can reasonably expect negativity in return (of course it is not an excuse for rudeness but it is certainly not unexpected). Advice for improvement can be found in the gray description boxes appearing underneath your questions that were put on hold. You can also look at recent well-received questions as examples. — User 2
Wouldn't it have been helpful to the original poster to post answers demonstrating how he can improve his questions, and why he might have been getting the "rude"(?) responses that he claims that he was getting?