<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 9:29 PM, jrtroberts <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jrtroberts@gmail.com">jrtroberts@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
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My time as a salesman should have taught me more
about swimming with sharks. If you can't keep up, don't worry about
staying on the porch, the sharks will eat you up anyway. <br></div></blockquote><div><br>I think very few serious linux users or developers want to see linux as waters infested with sharks. But interest groups and clubs often include a petty streak whether the interest is an operating system, amateur radio, or woodworking (you might be astonished at the arcane and factionalized nonsense which went on in woodworking organizations I became involved in some years back).<br>
<br>I think part of the problem you've experienced might be more representative of the culture of IRC and chat rooms than with the linux community as a whole. I've never functioned well in that world because I don't enjoy communicating in broken sentences and acronyms, and much of the discussion seems somewhat infantile.<br>
<br>There is one thing you mentioned as a problem that I don't necessarily see as insulting though. If someone suggests a document to read I wouldn't necessarily take it as avoiding the question or the equivalent of screaming "RTFM!". They may assume you haven't encountered that document, and might be trying to be genuinely helpful.<br>
<br>At one time I thought the rudeness on much of the internet arose from the legacy of Unix geek culture. Since then the internet has become flooded with non-geeks, and nothing much has changed in terms of overall civility, I think it has a lot more to do with the psychology of sitting and typing at a keyboard. Even if you are not anonymous it's easy to "let your fingers do the walking" (and thinking), and blurt things out without considering the effect at the other end. Believe me I know, because I blurt half considered nonsense out across the forums at least once per week.<br>
<br>Larry <br></div></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>"I see design standards that don't tell you how to come up with a good design (only how to write it down), employee evaluation standards that don't help you build meaningful long-term relationships with staff, testing standards that don't tell you how to invent a test that is worth running."<br>
<br> Tom DeMarco<br> Slack<br>