I have to admit, cries of "Read the FAQ!" are a hallmark of USENET. I used to rail at length at newbs who clearly did not do their due-diligence in newsgroups of yore, and even daily postings of it didn't do any good since all they saw was a group named something interesting, saw a few posts that seemed like that there were smart people around, and posted their question.
SF takes it a step further since it allows such questions to be taken out back and quietly shot rather than posted front-and-center for everyone to flame against. However, we're not above a little singeing of the newbs before shooting them.
In my opinion, ServerFault has become more elitist in the last 6-12 months. The mod-flags I was handling as a brand new mod back in February do have a different flavor than the ones I'm handling right now. Communities grow and evolve, that's just how it works.
As a perfect example of this, we've been actively weeding out the 2009/2010 era questions that wouldn't past the topical test today. The only reason we're doing that is because our definition of topical has evolved; some topics have lost the benefit of the doubt, others have been explicitly declared off-topic.
However...
Just like USENET, flaming the newbs only makes yourself and your flame-buddies feel any better about things.
Flaming the newbs is not equivalent to hanging their flayed corpses on the bridge as an example to anyone else who may transgress similarly.
Flaming the newbs is more equivalent to taking them to an alley somewhere and beating the snot out of them because you're %&$#-well tired of all the %(&@!(& newbs running around wrecking the place, and maybe this newb will tell their newb buddies to swing wide this time.
ServerFault is a place where people can come and have professional interactions. We've been stricter about that lately, and we're getting harder on those who don't hold up to that standard. You may see that as a bonus, but in actuality it isn't. The offended non-professionals we leave in our wake lead general perception that ServerFault is just like every other sysadmin community in being prickly, sarcastic, rough-and-tumble havens of thick-skinned smart people.
It works very well when people are behaving like we're supposed to. But pissing off those who don't do their due-diligence scares off others who will do the work to be successful here.
We don't need the help scaring people off!
Looking at our site statistics, our answer rate is slowly dropping, question-rate staying about the same, while our overall views are going up. Our search relevance is gaining, but we're net-losing active users. This is not a good trend, and providing a hostile site does us no favors.