Hi Simon,
I take it you are referring to this?
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/plant-identification-please/2439
you did ask a question, and it was answered, and I feel it was in no way “shooting you down”.
The first response pointed you in the right direction, and even followed up by asking you how you got to the forum to post your plant ID request instead of iNaturalist itself, which I can only assume to be an effort to evaluate whether something is misdirecting people to the forum for those type of enquiries.
The second response you got was to point out what the forum is actually for, as specified in the welcome message you would have got when you joined the forum. Again, a polite response and hardly “shooting you down”
then there was my response, which was to acknowledge that it was a simple mistake, and that to get your ID a little quicker you could start the ID process off by going as far as you can tell yourself, eg plantae, so the specialists for that area would get to see it quicker. Again, I thought I was polite and not “shooting you down”.
In my book, that makes the response you got pretty thorough. In fact, I feel at every stage of that you were encouraged to “keep flying”, so I have no idea where you get this notion that you were being “shot down”, and I think you may have your expectations set a little too high :)
There are some tutorial videos on the help pages, they might be a better place to start.
This might be reading between the lines too much… but “Aoraki-climber” and “where to replant it”… you aren’t taking plants from a National Park, are you? If so, then you definitely need to be shot down!