Jefromi, I realize I have not been perfect at communicating here. I am getting the impression that a few expert posters want the level of exactness in every post to be so perfect that it intimidates all but the professional food scientist types from answering anything. This suggests to me that that the moderation is taken a little too seriously, or that the high rep posters don't trust others to have good judgement. I have concluded that this community doesn't want people like me.

@JenniferS rumtscho and I are really trying to tell you: you are definitely welcome here. I think you're concluding that some statements from one or two high rep users are representative of the community and the moderators, and they're not. I also don't think those users are trying to make you feel unwelcome, they're just trying to get answers to be as accurate as possible.

You also have to keep in mind that every single high-rep user here has posted completely wrong things before too, and they've gotten called out on it too. (I've been on both sides of that myself.) They're not always right just because their rep is high - rep really just indicates that they've kept on posting a lot of answers.

If you don't think you want to try to be a part of our community, that's your decision, but we'd be really sad to see you go, and I guarantee you if you could actually ask everyone if they want you here, you'd get overwhelmingly positive answers. There are a lot of people here besides the few super-active high-rep users you're seeing all the time - that's how you've gotten all those upvotes on those answers. I appreciate you, they appreciate you, we as a community appreciate you.

Please also remember that high-rep users do not have any magical moderation powers. The absolute worst they can do to you is downvote an answer - but I think the scores of your answers demonstrate pretty well that even that isn't really happening.

And on a personal note (I'm just a mod, not the Voice of the Community), honestly, I want more people like you here. Not everything in the kitchen has to be taken super seriously, not everything needs the utmost precision and care.