Applied fields have a much higher barrier to entry in my experience as a designer with a background in the applied sciences. In contrast, anyone can emulate their favorite designer and 'fake it till they make it'.
I mean, is that untrue?
I guess the exclusivity is really helping. Popularity rankings alone can't solve minimum quality barriers. I just wished I had found it earlier, now it's shutting down.
Sorry those designers were dicks to you, we're not all like that.
I guess you can say that about any community which allows new people, and you can even keep saying it every year. I used to be (and I guess still am?) a member of a Turkish web site called "Ekşi Sözlük"[1], which used to (and maybe still does) mark your account with a generation flag which anyone could see. I remember discussions about Xth generation people being so not receptive of the community values and such... Just as in real life which happens with the birth years.
I guess this behavior has a name but I don't know what to search for.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ek%C5%9Fi_S%C3%B6zl%C3%BCk
Eternal September?
I was thinking more about the hostility towards the new.
Within programming, there is plenty of room for taste and finesse and snobbery at higher levels of abstraction, but the field is naturally gated for us by a hard meritocratic absolute. In most fields, it's not that way at all.
But the justifications for gating sites like this one or Dribbble has left me with an incredible distaste for the industry because it's fairly prevalent. I recall being in class and having the elite designers scoff from their towers over the lesser skilled individuals, as if somehow there's no way anyone else could attain the skill necessary to improve their own ability. Even my ex-Creative Director who studied under some ridiculously strong designers (e.g. Paul Rand) had that mindset where you either had it or you didn't.
In contrast, when I'm learning things like deep learning or math, you have incredibly smart people who put out tons of free information or books, who actively help others on forums/Quora/SO on their quest to become better. And most importantly, believe in the individual to become a better person.