> That's not the case.

Yes, it is. I have been active on both the main and meta sites for many years. I have seen so many of these complaints and they overwhelmingly boil down to that. And I have gotten so unbelievably stressed out on so many occasions trying to explain to people why their trivial objections are missing the point of the site completely.

> I've seen many Qs marked as duplicate where the actual answer would be different in a non-trivial manner.

Please feel free to cite specific examples. I'll be happy to explain policy.

> When I look at who all moderated on those Qs, they are usually users who haven't contributed to that topic at SO.

That is generally irrelevant.