"Target audience" connotes people that the site wanted to be there. That's just who showed up, because that's who will always show up basically anywhere that looks like it might be helpful to them, by default.
The biggest suckers were the people who were genuinely putting it effort there. So, in the end, did they make the world a better place? One would like to hope they did, but we are yet to see the long term consequences of the capabilities which were created with the value extracted there.
you sound exactly like the mfs that ruined that forum.
But also, we were not "mods". We were just members of the community who did absolutely nothing to gain power over you except to participate by asking and answering questions. The actual moderators of the site, with a diamond next to their names, were almost literally one-in-a-million users. But it only took 3,000 reputation to cast a close vote, and 15 to flag to close a question (prioritizing it for consideration by the first group).
Posts like yours are made, IMX, because people had a bad experience asking a question. If that describes you, feel free to provide a link to the question and I'll be happy to give a detailed explanation of why things went as they did and what the site wanted you to do better in asking it.