Ben's notes on People Behaving Badly
====================================

A few rare people seem completely unable to participate in a quiet,
respectful open-source community project.  Everything they do either
irritates the community, or irritates them.  What are the common
behaviors we've seen?

* silly nickname, or obscured real name.  Makes the community think
  you're juvenile.

    "solo turn" ()
    "Kraythe"   (Robert Simmons)
    "Files"     (Shamim Islam, BA BS)
    "Sir Woody Hackswell"

* multiple nicknames: a different username in email lists, IRC,
  commits, bugtracker, discussion boards, etc.  Makes it really hard
  to figure out it's the same person talking.

* overuse of CAPITAL LETTERS, and excessive punctuation!!!!!!!!!

* inability to pick up on the "mood" or common goals of the community.
  (for example, if a community is in feature-freeze, or busy trying to
  attack a certain class of problems.)

* inability to figure out how to do basic things (build the software,
  use the software), even when there are clear pointers to docs and
  many examples.

* hubris:  "everyone in the world *must* have the same itch as me"

    - automatic insult:  instead of "I don't understand why X is a
      certain way, can someone explain?", the first words are "man, X
      is so ridiculously stupid!", or "can someone please tell me why
      this software is behaving so stupidly?  or why it lacks such an
      obviously critical feature?"

    - prognostication: "this software will *never* succeed without feature X"

    - blackmail: "my company will *never* use this software without feature X"

    - regret:  "I control hordes of developers, and I was going to
      have them contribute to this project, but now I won't."

    - unwilling to work:  "this is how it should be, but I'm not going
      to help make it happen."

    - unrealistic dreams:  "I'm going to code this Gigantic Thing,
      even though I have no idea what I'm doing, and everyone
      recommends against it.  Everyone join me!"

    - wasted efforts:  spending a huge amount of time coding, only to be
      surprised that it doesn't work, or gets rejected by the
      community.  A bit of discussion or research would have prevented
      the wasted time.

* various forms of disrespect for other people's time:

    - posts that demand help in an angry tone, rather than than request help.

    - any post that can be answered with "RTFM"

    - netiquette violations

       - posts sent to the wrong mailing list or forum

       - starting a totally new mail thread by replying to an existing one.

    - beating dead horses:  demanding that a subject ("my itch") be
      re-discussed, without taking any time to read archived
      discussions, or do any necessary research to bring new light to
      the topic.  Forces everyone to rehash all the old ground.  "It's
      new to me, and therefore I demand everyone pay attention to it."

* deep insecurity:  able to dish criticism, but unable to take it back.
  reading personal insults where there are none.

* paranoia:  a sense that everyone is ganging up on them, or that
  information is being deliberately held back by some sort of
  conspiracy of "rulers".