[0] https://nedbatchelder.com/text/bigo.html
[1] https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201711/toxic_experts.html
I'll double down on my toxicity by saying I didn't like the page layout. As someone with ADHD (and a declining memory), I need to be led through formatting/sub-headings/bullets/colored sections/etc into each detail or it all blends together into a wall of text. The longer it takes to make a point (visually and conceptually), the more lost I am. I couldn't easily follow it. The Simple Wikipedia page was more straight to the point (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation), but reading the "full" Wikipedia page thrusts you headlong into a lot of math, which to me signifies that this shit is more complex than it seems and simplifying it is probably a bad idea.
Ask yourself why. The usual answer is that top experts either can't be bothered to create better content, or they actively gatekeep, believing that their field must remain hard to learn and the riff-raff must be kept out.
I think the first step is to accept that laypeople can have legitimate interest in certain topics and deserve accessible content. The remedy to oversimplified explanations is to write something better - or begrudgingly accept the status quo and not put people down for attempts that don't meet your bar.
It's also good to ponder if the details we get worked up about actually matter. Outside the academia, approximately no one needs a precise, CS-theoretical definition of big-O notation. Practitioners use it in a looser sense.
The thing I was taught wasn't wrong, but it left out important details. There are very specific steps involved in cleaning parts, applying the right lubricant, not applying lubricant, aligning parts, not forcing things, doing the same change on both sides, torque specs, bedding steps. If you don't do them, the brakes just fail again. The person who taught me didn't go over those important yet intricate details - probably because they were taught by a non-expert too.
If the choice is "quit my job to start writing lots of expert content", or "accept the status quo", I choose neither. I have my own life to live. But if during the course of living my life, a wave of inaccuracy begins to lap at my door, I will attempt to stem the tide, in my own way. The toxic aspect, I think, is really just the way in which these corrections are given, and definitely I and others could do better with our tone. But to just give up and not give the corrections at all, I think would be disastrous.
(fwiw, I think HN's overzealous "guidelines" force people to either be toxicly positive or insidiously critical. that's not to say I'm not an asshole, but it's hard to just be normal on this forum without this bizarre culture coming down on you)