On Being a Bastard (Cultivating online communities)

http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/blog/matt-s-trout/on-being-a-bastard/

by jrockway • 17 years ago

18 26 17 years ago

shadowcat.co.uk

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.

cwan• 17 years ago

I do think he makes a good point though that "Your patient, non-bastard supporters are the lifeblood of your community" and these are the people who have to be protected. Whether his approach is the right one is arguably questionable.

houseabsolute4• 17 years ago

Sure, but it's hardly novel: "productive, peaceful people make a good community." Can't argue with that.

mst8• 17 years ago

It is extremely questionable. However, on the occasions I stopped doing what I do (usually because I felt that I was starting to burn out and be too much of an asshole even for my own tastes) nothing anybody else did helped very much and eventually I got asked to come back by a number of the nice people because the standard of behaviour was sliding and they weren't being listened to because they were, well, being too nice.

So I can't claim my approach is right, only that it works and that in the absence of somebody finding a better one I'll continue to follow it - and I'm reasonably comfortable that in this case the ends -do- justify the means, at least according to my own moral calculus.

mst8• 17 years ago

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.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

YOU USED ALL CAPS, DUMBASS!!!! ;)

houseabsolute4• 17 years ago

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.

Daniel_Newby2• 17 years ago

What's wrong in your example is that you supply no reasons to pay attention to you, then fly into a rage when you are not paid attention to.

A better way would look something like this:

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

Master: HTML allows many variations. Making a regex to handle all possibilities is too hard.

Master: Instead use HTML::TableExtract. You can learn to use it faster than you fix all the tricky problems in a regex.

jrockway4• 17 years ago

I have seen mst in action, and his techniques are pretty effective. I think I have had just as much luck with newbies by being nice, however... but perhaps not.

(My reaction upon being yelled at would be to leave, but this is not the behavior I observe in other people. mst has quite a few fans that started off as "victims" of the techniques he describes in the artice.)

houseabsolute4• 17 years ago

I'm glad that this technique worked for a few people that are now friends with mst, but I think an even better outcome might have been achieved with a gentler approach. Naturally, how mst goes about his business is his own affair, but I think it's worth having the opposing viewpoint especially in an article like this.

mock• 17 years ago

While I agree that being an asshole is more frequently harmful than helpful, I don't think the behaviour in question here is actually assholic in nature. Every community needs to have a way of enforcing community values or that community will dissolve. That enforcement can be a police officer, a drill sergeant, a moderator, or just a loud mouthed member of the community that expresses the group's scorn for the behaviour in question.

What is important is that everyone who witnesses the policeman deliver a lecture to delinquent teens, the sergeant chew out a new recruit, the moderator remove a troll or flamebait, or the loud mouth deliver an invective laced screed to the newbie who just doesn't get it, gets the message that "certain behaviours aren't tolerated here" and by extension, other (more polite) behaviours are.

When the policeman gives you the nod on the street corner on your way to work, when the sergeant says, "Nice work", when the moderator uses something you wrote as an example of what a good post looks like, or when the community loudmouth bastard says "SHUT UP AND PAY ATTENTION TO HIM" and you realize he's talking about you - that's the point when you realize you're part of the community.

mst8• 17 years ago

Exactly!

jrockway4• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

In this case, the regular people are the airline.

awnstudio2• 17 years ago

That being said, I'm a #perl regular so wheres my free shit. Alright, I'm going to count til ten.........., (wtf).

But in all seriousness, mst is a great developer and community leader, I only know this because I love Perl and always note CPAN authors and contributors of the modules I use. I was (am on occasion) one of mst's victims :) and I can say that when I was a newbie, if my skin wasn't thick, I would have been discouraged by him. Now I suppose Im a fan. That said, I wish we as a community could better cultivate the new and direct them to community projects they can help with. .... I suppose that might entail some stroking.

jvdh• 17 years ago

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

mst8• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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

On Being a Bastard (Cultivating online communities)

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