> one needs to be entirely "stop energy" (to take a nice phrasing from a now dead comment).
I'm sorry that comment got down modded. In fact, I think/hope I voted it up.
One of the interesting tensions this dialog has surfaced (at least for me) is the relationship between volunteerism and the way outsiders interact with the volunteer community. More than a few people effectively suggested my comment shouldn't have been made. While I do agree with the need to protect contributors from a lot of what they have to put up with, I'm not sure I'd ring fence those communities quite that securely.
Put another way, if my comment really does fall into a class of those that shouldn't have been made, what are the 'rules' for outsiders engaging open source (or other volunteer) communities?
> Fortunately, your top level comment was taken in good faith
Agreed. But after 30 years on the net, it still surprises me how many people just automatically default to whatever the 'bad faith' interpretation might be. We all read what we read in our own context, and this suggests to me that, for many of us, that context is rather angry and upset.
> this suggests to me that, for many of us, that context is rather angry and upset.
This doesn't even seem unreasonable to me: if every time my project was discussed it was met with scepticism and outright "why are you bothering to do this?", I would get fairly tired and, after the first few times, get fed up with putting in the emotional effort to see the positive nugget buried in the negative phrasing.
Someone taking 5 minutes to write a comment about a project they've just been made aware of is unlikely to have the context to know whether that project regularly gets these sort of comments ("I really meant it as a way to learn more about the project, please, authors, can you politely answer my rudely phrased question/criticism") and so they should be the ones putting in the effort of research and of starting the conversation on a good foot: questions about the points of scepticism (rather than blank statements) are a good start.
I'm sorry that comment got down modded. In fact, I think/hope I voted it up.
One of the interesting tensions this dialog has surfaced (at least for me) is the relationship between volunteerism and the way outsiders interact with the volunteer community. More than a few people effectively suggested my comment shouldn't have been made. While I do agree with the need to protect contributors from a lot of what they have to put up with, I'm not sure I'd ring fence those communities quite that securely.
Put another way, if my comment really does fall into a class of those that shouldn't have been made, what are the 'rules' for outsiders engaging open source (or other volunteer) communities?
> Fortunately, your top level comment was taken in good faith
Agreed. But after 30 years on the net, it still surprises me how many people just automatically default to whatever the 'bad faith' interpretation might be. We all read what we read in our own context, and this suggests to me that, for many of us, that context is rather angry and upset.