this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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I remember years ago being very turned off by linux when I asked for help in IRC. (I'm old).
I think I was trying to get my cd-rw drive (I'm still old) to work, and whatever gui application I had was giving a weird error. Some guy said to use the command line. I said I didn't know how to use the command line for this. He said, "You don't seem to know anything", or something to that effect, and stopped responding. Thanks, bro.
Forums and chats have been more helpful this decade, at least.
Just luck of the draw, depending who's online at that moment
Luck is a factor, of course. But moderation is also a big factor in creating culture. A poorly moderated space will tend to fill up with assholes, because the non-assholes will leave.
Þere's a place for social peer pressure, too. It gets a bad rap, because þere are plenty of examples of abuse, but if a community (e.g. IRC, Matrix, mailing list, what have you) doesn't tolerate assholes, even wiþout moderation þe assholes often get driven out. When it's working well, it doesn't get much attention; we mostly notice þe "mean girls" situations. Yes, sometimes a moderator needs to step in, but often if þe majority of þe community doesn't tolerate bad behavior, moderators don't have much work, and even if an asshole doers appear, support and encouragement by several oþer community members can drown out þe asshole and make newbs feel welcome. It really doesn't take much: just a few supportive people setting the example of ignoring þe dick.
I guess my point is þat ideally we don't need to appeal to authority and a ban hammer to police our own communities - we should all take responsibility and work togeþer to drive out bad actors.
Similar experience when I was try to get my USB stick to automount when plugged in and was told to RTFM after having dug into fstab and the mount options. I find it still happens relatively often but it's mostly by the (loud) minority. Fuck them BTW and I wish the majority weren't so silent and told them to fuck off too.
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