

On Being a Bastard (Cultivating online communities) - jrockway
http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/on-being-a-bastard/

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houseabsolute
Not impressed. I'm pretty sure being an asshole is more frequently harmful
than helpful. I myself have been one from time to time and I understand the
motivation to paint it as a strength. It's not. Even pretending that, "We need
a few like me to protect all the nice ones," is specious. We must resist
attempts to justify our bad behavior with pseudo-reasoning.

~~~
mst
If you find what I'm saying specious and pseudo-reasoning. perhaps you could
outline specifically which arguments you find unconvincing and why; I'm aware
that what I have here is very much a working hypothesis backed up only by
anecdata, but I thought it was a reasonably consistent hypothesis and any
holes you can poke in it would be very welcome.

~~~
houseabsolute
Thanks for replying. I'm not really an IRC person, but I find that the best
online communities are ones in which real names and adherence to real life
social norms are encouraged. You're a rare person if you would say what you
did to the newbie in your example in real life. Personally, I feel it would be
just as good if the conversation went this way:

newbie: I'm trying to parse out the td tags in this HTML and I can't get the
regexp right

expert: Please don't parse HTML with regexps - try HTML::TableExtract.

newbie: my regexp is /<td>(.*)</ but it doesn't work

mst: newbie: You can't use regexps to parse HTML. Look at this module: ... Now
we've answered you twice. If you ask again, you'll be muted for a few minutes.

Continued persistence on the part of the newbie should be met the same way you
would in real life. Tell him if he keeps bothering you, you'll uninvite him
from your club, and then follow through. The community's purpose is not to
educate outsiders who don't wish to receive an education, but for the
enrichment of people who will participate as equals. Establishing a norm of
unpleasantness, even on the periphery, for the sake of a dubious chance at
helping out is not a tradeoff I'd make.

~~~
mst
The next line in that conversation is:

newbie: WTF. But I just wanted help with my regexp! Quit being a nazi! You
have no right to ban me I'm just trying to ask a question!

or them quitting immediately. Or at least, it has usually been one of the two
in my experience. But I'm not going to claim that means the technique doesn't
work; just that it hasn't, for me, so far. I should probably experiment more
with it but I suspect it will, oddly, come across far more heavy handed than a
bout of profanity.

~~~
dagw
if you took a few seconds to explain why regexp is the wrong solution rather
than just saying "don't use it", I'm sure the user would not only leave a lot
more enlightened, but would also stop asking the same question.

~~~
mst
If only that were actually true.

Well, no, a lot of the time it does work, and I never say a word or I'm the
one doing the explaining.

The point of the example is that there's a fairly common pattern where people
don't listen, don't become enlightened, and don't stop asking the same
question because they've managed to get tunnel vision through staring at their
non-working code for too long.

At which point a short sharp verbal slap upside the head often serves to
dislodge the cobwebs, at which point they start thinking again, read the
explanation properly and become enlightened.

------
jrockway
My thoughts are that "regulars" deserve special treatment over normal users.
It creates loyalty, and you want the regulars to be loyal.

Look at airline loyalty programs, for example. Ask a once-a-year traveler how
much he likes "Foo Airlines", then ask someone who travels 100,000 miles a
year on Foo Airlines. The person who travels 100,000 miles a year will like
Foo Airlines a lot more than the once-a-year traveler because Foo Airlines
rewards his loyalty with lots of free stuff that "normal users" don't get.

I don't see why the people involved in the open-source community would be any
different.

~~~
chromatic
In this case, the regular people _are_ the airline.

------
jvdh
I wonder how many people are going to use this as an excuse to be a bastard.

~~~
mst
Too many. I just hope it's outweighed by people watching their communities die
because nobody's setting social boundaries and standing the fuck up and doing
something about it.

~~~
perlpilot
Luckily, the regulars on IRC can tell the "good" assholes from the "bad"
assholes and act appropriately :-)

