Your caricature of what MF is like is so grotesquely at odds with my experience that I would suspect that you are exaggerating or making it up. Metafilter, by and large, has an informed, intelligent and very helpful community. There are always jerks or people having a bad day but the mods deal with that promptly. That said, people who are just asinine, like perhaps those making unfair generalizations, are often dealt with by gentle ridicule. I have never seen anyone unfairly snarked, ever.