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On the one hand, this is a real problem. On the other hand, the source linked as "source 2" at the bottom demonstrates just how awful, condescending, and elitist geeks can be when lording knowledge over others. It's not hard to be friendly, and those IRC logs are nothing to be proud of.

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The "helpers" in both examples are awful. Ugh.

Also representative of all of my attempts to get support via IRC.

It varies heavily by channel. It's impressive what you can produce if you decide ahead of time that your community won't be that way. For instance, the Rust community is exceptional; I would never expect to see anything like this there.

This is only too true, and I have no doubt that this behaviour has deeply discouraged people looking for a bit of help to get them up the learning curve.

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