[Permit]

> It's not an entirely different problem because the main method through which moderators are mean is in closing new questions as dupes

This discussion needs a grounded definition of "toxic" then.

Elsewhere in this thread I see:

> I disagree with this. You can tell someone that a question is not appropriate for a community without being a jerk. Or you can tell them that there needs to be more information in a question without being a jerk. I do not think being mean is a prerequisite for successful curation of information.

So we're all speaking about different things it appears.

[zahlman]

> This discussion needs a grounded definition of "toxic" then.

When I wrote about the issue on MSE (https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/394952/173477) a couple years ago I explicitly called out that the terminology is not productive. It generally seems to describe dissatisfaction with the user experience that results from a failure to meet the user's expectations; but the entire reason for the conflict is that the user's expectations are not aligned with what the existing community seeks to provide.

And yes, the ambiguity you note has been spammed all over the Internet (everywhere Stack Overflow is discussed) the entire time. Some people are upset about how things are done; others consider what is done to be inherently problematic. And you can't even clearly communicate about this. For example, someone who writes "You can tell someone that a question is not appropriate for a community without being a jerk." might have in mind "don't point people at the policy document as if they should have known better, and don't give specific interpretation as if their reading comprehension is lacking"; but might also have in mind "point people at the policy document, and give specific interpretation, because otherwise there's no way for them to know". Or it might be "say something nice, but don't close the question because that sends the wrong message inherently" (this interpretation is fundamentally misguided and fundamentally misunderstands both the purpose and consequences of question closure).

And yes, every now and then, the person making the complaint actually encountered someone who said something unambiguously nasty. For those cases, there is a flagging system and a Code of Conduct. (But most Code of Conduct violations come from new users complaining when they find out that they aren't entitled to an open, answered question. And that's bad enough that many people don't comment to explain closures specifically to avoid de-anonymizing themselves.)