I believe some work has to be done in order to make sure that people do understand who are the users we are looking for.
The FAQ, first of all, isn't clear.
The Quantitative Finance Stack Exchange is intended for professionals and academics involved in securities valuations, risk modeling, and other topics related to quant modeling or trading. Basically, if you aren't earning a living at this, it's probably off topic.
It refers academics which is unclear I believe. Let's make it clear at say something like:
Questions allowed in this site will typically come from students who have at least a master degree in quantitative finance or from quantitative finance professionals.
Same clarification is clearly needed about questions not to ask.
I have been quite active on this site which I really fancy, but I must say that the tone of some users has sometimes been rude (not towards me).
I understand that it's a pain to typically close questions which shouldn't be there, and I participate to this task.
However I believe we have to be able to make sure that people understand what is on/off topic.
At the moment, this is not the case. CLEARLY. Just look at the amount of closed question.
Is it possible the add a message when user post a question?
Another idea: let's migrate more questions to make sure that users find the right site to ask and stop coming here
Finally, let's try to keep our calm, as we are a BETA and we need new visitors (as described in the fact); I'm not sure an hostile environment will attract people.