@ΜετάEd Ok, the "nearly an hour" bit was exaggerated and was inclusive of writing the post in a way that would hopefully not tread on the toes of some apparently overly sensitive people, but a) the sort of stuff I was looking for was not easy to find, b) I was unable to find anything on the web that directly answered the question, and c) this sort of thing is what EL&U and SE is about, helping each other out. No offense taken whatsoever by the way ;-)

@ΜετάEd I appreciate you telling me what things are like from your perspective, with trying to keep the site "clean" etc. - fair enough, and that might explain why you "ran out of downvotes" for all the other questions I saw that were a lot worse than the one in question, if you'll pardon the pun. I also agree about the Area 51 site being a good idea.

But my point that the downvote privilege description contradicts what you're saying still stands. Maybe it should be updated, or something should be added to say that different criteria may apply for senior site members.

"I'm really curious and wouldn't know how to begin researching this topic" should trump not having done any research.

Taken as an isolated case (deliberately not stepping back to see the bigger picture), this guy was hard done by. I upvoted his post and answered because I felt sorry for him, not because of the bounty (or maybe because of the desperation that gesture showed). I can't help but feel there are too many people who "jump on the bandwagon" when they see something that's been downvoted, like the famous five monkeys in a cage.

Finally, I'd humbly like to point out some strawmen you're putting up in your arguments: 1) There's a lot more to answering the question than one minor mutation of sounds.

2) The site is not just for "experts", it's also for "enthusiasts" (otherwise what are you and I doing here, neither of us being English professors?). Where does it say "useful to an expert"? If that's so, then the site is intended to be useful only to a handful of people... that's not the spirit of SE and frankly frighteningly elitist.

3) The site may be "overrun" by people who aren't native English speakers, but the question about the pronounciation of a name that's originally foreign to English could've been asked by anyone, English speaker or no. (By the way, many of the "really bad" questions are from English speakers who speak English badly and never bothered learning or weren't offered the chance to learn things like grammar - it's not just ESL'ers.)

4) About it not being realistic that you or moderators to constantly comment: that should come with the territory. If you can't spend enough time to read a question or answer, think about whether it's good or bad, and then downvote and comment, you shouldn't be downvoting, imho. Personally, I only have a few minutes to half an hour here or there to spend on SE sites, I'd never make a good moderator because I can't put in the time.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to chat, even if our timing seems to be bad. ;-) I'm in Perth, Western Australia so probably on at odd times for Americans. And take what I say with a grain of salt, as I am really rather inexperienced at "how things should work" on EL&U and may well be wrong on multiple counts.