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Comment by mion | Hacker News Reader

He's not talking about lowering the bar to entry, he's just saying you don't need to humiliate others when they are just trying to help you.

You could at least dismiss them in a friendly/neutral way. "Sorry, can't accept this: check out procedure X in the docs."

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Hence the "sympathize" part, but then again, I also sympathize with people who are human and eventually want to start inflicting bodily harm on people who can't be arsed to read the FAQ before A'ing the same Q again.

Part of the "bar to entry" is that mindset. You don't get a pat on the back and warm encouragement for submitting crap code. You get told your code is crap with the expectation you'll improve before wasting the reviewer's time again.

Call me crazy, but I happen to love this environment.

I know it can be a pain in the ass when people ask you the same (stupid) thing over and over again, but still, IMHO a "leader" of any kind should never bash his "followers". Or he'll end up losing them.

with the expectation you'll improve before wasting the reviewer's time again When you insult people and act like a jerk I don't think you want them to come back ever again.

Your FAQ better be very visible and better include the question and a working answer then.

Also (no offense, you might be a real genius) but a lot of people who think they are above everyone else really isn't. I've seen people frown at the use of Java reflection because it wasn't type safe then go ahead and deliver brand new features written in pl/sql.

You sir are a douchebag, and I won't participate in any project you're associated with.

I don't understand why everyone's pussyfooting around this guy. Please? No offense? This guy is THE PROBLEM. He doesn't get a pat on the back and warm encouragement for providing crap people skills. People skills are part of a project too, just like code.

I downvote rude people on HN, and ascribe to the idea of not saying something you wouldn't say in person. But this guy? I'd say this and more to him in person, on a stage, in front of a million people. Go ahead, downvote me. It's all in a good cause.

You downvote me for an opinion (which is simply "stupid people should not be coddled") absent any animus to any person on this board (you including), and yet I'm the douchebag.

Heal thyself, doctor.

Yes, I find it useful to stand up for others.

This applies to any project. If one sees others being mistreated, one should vote with one's feet and leave. The defense of "but they're treating me fine" is the height of hypocrisy.

Stupidity is an aesthetic judgement. We all run into people it's too hard to help, people we might call stupid under our breath. When this happens to me I move on in silence, rather than turn my aesthetic judgement into generalizations that sully the forum (mailing list, irc channel, etc.) for everyone.

HELLO RETARD YOU'RE SITTING IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER

COPY AND FUCKING PASTE DO YOU SPEAK IT

Nevertheless, I stand by my comment ;) If you're repeatedly getting the same questions asked, in addition to the FAQ (which people, being people, are quite likely not to read), create a text file with common answers. Each time somebody asks a common question, copy and paste the answer.

This was something somebody suggested doing on the Joel on Software board, I think. They used it for fielding frequently-asked questions from trial users. Apparently people responded to it very well. Trial users have the potential of turning into paying customers, of course; open source contributors... not so much. Nevertheless, if you really want to provide the personal touch (and if you're spending time insulting people on the internet, clearly you do!), then this is a reasonable way of providing some simulacrum without too much effort.

You could just fill the text file with creative insults, if you prefer.

Sounds more like you love the environment because you feel good shooting people down rather than what's best for the project (and open-source) long-term. This attitude is why more people don't contribute to - and become better at - the process.

Sometimes shooting people down is what's best for the project. You make it sound like those are mutually exclusive.

I completely disagree. There's nothing gained from making someone feel incompetent when they're just volunteering to better themselves, meet like-minded people and work on something they believe in. You will end up surrounding yourself with equally socially inept people if you encourage this behavior in your community.

Be it doing a better job explaining the project and the requirement/skillset minimums, aptitude tests before they even contribute, or having a pre-defined list of responses to bad code (i.e. '294: Doesn't follow x standard, please see FAQ pg. 84'), there are better ways of handling these situations that encourage people to get better without making them feel worse. Just because bullying people has worked in getting the response that you want doesn't make it the right one.

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