What I don't understand is that if you believe your users are idiots doesn't that mean you need to design a product that an idiot can use?

Berating users is just ridiculous and does nothing but harm the product. I am seriously pissed off at this culture of "we know best." It is a disconnect from the userbase and we've constantly seen it lead to the product being overtaken by a company that doesn't follow this principle.

Like every other part of Google support, there aren't any google employees actually involved. "Diamond Product Expert" is just a tag a community user can earn by getting enough points.

I'm not sure how that makes things better. In fact, I think it makes things worse. You're letting random people that are self described experts? That's a great way to create a toxic environment. Every single place I've gone to that has a "community support" that actual employees rarely or never visit has been extremely toxic and unhelpful. They create feedback loops for this toxicity and "in crowd."

That, to me, is precisely the problem.

Actually providing support to users would require hiring a lot of people and maybe actually empowering them to take actions that were helpful; but, probably empowering them opens security concerns, so they'd just tell you to use the self-service things that are probably broken anyway. So that option is not a good use of Google's resources.

Moderating a community self-help site well requires a lot of people too, so just leaving it to the community seems like the only option for Google.

I've seen a lot of companies try these sites, and they start with real employees putting real responses, but it quickly spirals into unanswered questions and terribleness. The only ones that work are where there are lots of company paid moderators keeping things focused and productive, but I'm sure management thought community support was going to reduce support costs.

I’m fine blaming both. A poor platform doesn’t excuse toxic behavior.