Comment by raxxorrax
7 years ago
I have kind of the opposite experience. When submitting patches or solutions, you often don't get feedback at all, people just seem happy.
In some cases someone arrives and implements a smarter, shorter and more easy to read solution to the problem you addressed that is superior in every way. Puts you down for a moment, but in normal cases there isn't any snark involved at all. I hope it also happens the other way around from time to time. But in general I wouldn't say people are vindictive. It is the internet and the slapfight is forgotten 1.5 minutes after it happened.
Maybe it has something to do with how popular a project is and how often certain question are asked.
Yeah, I've seen both sides of it too. As you say, a lot (the majority?) of projects are really happy to get patches, often rework minor things in the patch instead of telling you to re-do stuff. This is especially true of smaller 1-man shows. If you send a patch for a bug it's either gleefully lapped up and applied, or ignored forever (life happens, I get that, no problem).
The other side isn't always true vindictiveness, just wise-ass level garbage.
Anyway it's turned me off more than a couple of projects, forums and sub-reddits. You get that 1 dude that you see again and again posting newbie put-downs. They are usually not the lead of the project, but certainly a lieutenant-type. Maybe with "mod" privs. A lot of the time the regulars are sycophantic towards this person, to get on their good side I suppose, maybe to see if they too get some recognition or power. It's rather sad to see, but what else can they do? Walk away I guess. And as a lurker it's what I do when I see it.
Also, maybe I read too much into the text. It could just be that text is a really bad media for niceness, and something that would be said out-loud in a different tone comes across as jerky in text.