Sorry, the first down vote was me. I thought the wording was particularly abrasive and combative thanks to the foul language, although that has apparently been edited out now.
I was flying through the site, and did not have much time on my hands. I think people believe you take offense at everything because the way you write makes it "seem" that way. Ironically, you end up coming across offensive to everyone else at the same time, and thus the cycle is born.
Your goal of keeping a clean site is certainly an admirable one. The goal is not what is at fault...the approach is. You just need to take a better, less abrasive approach. Instead of asking "Is this a serious question?", which is pretty much bound to be taken offensively most of the time because you are questioning the askers motives, would it not be better to offer advice as to how the question could be improved to become a better fit? In that case, there is little to take offense at, and quite probably something to be thanked for.
Here at PhotoSE, we have tried very hard to take a different tack than most of the rest of the StackExchange sites. Instead of approaching community moderation with the mindset "Your question sucks! Your mucking up the site! GTFO!", we prefer to be welcoming and helpful in helping our members, particularly the newer ones (Evan has only been a member for five months), learn how to integrate into the site and our way of doing things. We aren't the largest photography site on the net, so we do not have the benefit of simply relying on our size and base of knowledge to attract and maintain a membership. As one of the smallest sites, we need to be cordial, helpful, and attentive to the needs of those asking questions.
In regards to questions themselves...they will not always be worded perfectly and will rarely be structured according to the rules of StackExchange. Our base of questions more often than not these days comes from "outside" rather than "inside", as the general internet populace interested in photography comes here to have their questions answered, not necessarily participate in the community as an active, contributing member. We need to be a bit more forgiving of less than perfect "StackExchange-esque" behavior or conformance to the rules and guidelines as a result. After all, that is pretty much what we are here for...to help those who come here to ask a question, regardless of whether they have particularly notable skill in terms of how they ask it.
I should note that there are caveats to the above. We recently had a user come through who demonstrated an explicitly rude attitude, demonstrating a very strong sense of entitlement. They acted as though we were their rightful slaves, and that it was our duty to answer their question, as they worded it, without complaint, in a timely manner. They were apparently quite fine berating, degrading, and deriding of our membership. Just as much as it is unhelpful or wrong for us to be abrasive to new members, a new member is most certainly not innately entitled to anything from us.
Rude behavior is rude behavior, and if someone is being outwardly rude, demanding, inconsiderate, belligerent, derisive, antagonistic or anything else of that nature, it is simply unacceptable.
Regarding the specific question here, the problem of remembering to change your settings is not an uncommon one in photography. I often have the same problem, as to thousands of other photographers. It, quite simply, the REASON for the existence of Canon's "Custom 1-3" camera modes on the main dial. People forget to reset their settings all the time. There are ways of dealing with the problem. For some, the answer is simply "Get a higher-end Canon with user-configurable custom camera modes. For others, the answer is to train themselves to reset their camera to some known baseline (such as EV 0 on the exposure scale in the viewfinder) whenever they chance composition or scenes.
Suffice to say, questions about how to deal with remembering your camera settings ARE related to photography, and as such ARE on topic for the site. Just because it does not have to do with the photographs themselves does not mean a question is off topic. There is more to photography than just the photographs themselves.
If it helps, my M.O. here is to try and find a way to answer a question first, before I start thinking about why it should be closed. (There may be a few obvious exceptions to this rule, such as when a question is more than clearly off topic and needs migration to another site, total spam, etc.) Even if a question does eventually get closed, or migrated, I believe it is better to invest the time offering your help...which is supposedly what we are all here for...than to try and find a way NOT to offer your help. Your answer may still be valid even if the question is closed, and could be useful to viewers of that question, or merged into a duplicate, or even accepted on another SE site.
