[ILUG] Mother and Father.

[Gary Coady]

Apologies and thanks to Eric S. Raymond - the following is an extract from
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html


Odds are you'll screw up a few times on hacker community forums - in ways
detailed in this article, or similar. And you'll be told exactly how you
screwed up, possibly with colourful asides. In public.

When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the experience,
claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies, scream, hold your
breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's employers, leave the toilet
seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you do:

Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and appropriate.

Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people
actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that all criticism
should have been conveyed via private mail: That's not how it works. Nor is
it useful to insist you've been personally insulted when someone comments
that one of your claims was wrong, or that his views differ. Those are loser
attitudes.

There have been hacker forums where, out of some misguided sense of
hyper-courtesy, participants are banned from posting any fault-finding with
another's posts, and told "Don't say anything if you're unwilling to help
the user." The resulting departure of clueful participants to elsewhere
causes them to descend into meaningless babble and become useless as
technical forums.

Exaggeratedly "friendly" (in that fashion) or useful: Pick one.

Remember: When that hacker tells you that you've screwed up, and (no matter
how gruffly) tells you not to do it again, he's acting out of concern for
(1) you and (2) his community. It would be much easier for him to ignore you
and filter you out of his life. If you can't manage to be grateful, at least
have a little dignity, don't whine, and don't expect to be treated like a
fragile doll just because you're a newcomer with a theatrically
hypersensitive soul and delusions of entitlement.