Just an idea:<p>first post:Hi, it appears that running Pkg.add("IJulia") is broken. Please fix it or stop advertising this module...<p>first response: This is a volunteer effort. We regret to inform you that reports and issues in the tone of the above complaint are unacepptable. We cannot (and will not) help you until you ask for help in a polite way.<p>Status changed: from "open" to "awaiting politeness"<p>---<p>The world contains people who want to act like this @aragnon. It will still contain those people tomorrow. Complaining about their sense of entitlement is not likely to achieve much. And we need to spend very little effort with these requests. We need <i></i>procedure<i></i>. We need simple rules, and absolute enforcement.<p>I don't know that Ijulia is, but I thank you guys for your efforts!
Very inflammatory title. This happens occasionally, but I'd hardly call it "the environment that OSS developers work in." Furthermore, this really has little to do with OSS or even software development at all. The world is filled with rude and insensitive people that can't interact with others courteously and professionally. That is not news nor is it interesting.
In 1924, William Faulkner quit his job as a postal worker, saying "I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp". With regards to FLOSS, people don't even have to invest the two cents. Which highlights the rudeness of some people - they rudely demand that people who donate their free time to help people, donate even more of their time to fix a problem.<p>While this is unfortunate, as Faulkner noted, it's not unique to FLOSS. Anyone who is in a position where they regularly interact with the public is going to run into rude people and crazies now and again.
For a collection of this type of issues please see IssuesFromHell<p><a href="https://twitter.com/issuesfromhell" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/issuesfromhell</a>
Really surprised they didn't shut down the thread sooner and I'm a little disappointed the devs didn't get a better "zinger" in there at the end, but major props to yuyichao for being a class act the whole way through. I don't think I would have had the patience to continue helping after that tirade.
I understand that the user had a very inflammatory attitude, but the dev helping the user actually agreed with his concerns. Yeah, the user wasn't being nice, but the dev was nice anyway. This happens everywhere, every day, in real life. It's not just the Internet's veil of anonymity, it's just that people are mad for reasons often beyond what you can see.<p>It looks like the user just needed to vent, and the dev seemed to ignore it. And that's what you should do. Trying to interact meaningfully with an emotion that doesn't mean anything will not help you. Pointing to community standards will often only aggravate mad people further. <i>Either help the person or lock the issue and leave it at that.</i><p>Calling out specific people publicly in HN posts is not a good idea either. If you must, I suggest anonymizing the content.
Welcome to customer support at every organization everywhere. Many people who are have problems with your project (whether it be a paid or free product) are jerks about it. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, but it's going to have no effect on their attitude.
This seems similar in style to a Linus Torvalds rant, e.g. <a href="http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html" rel="nofollow">http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02866.html</a>.<p>Julia is within their rights to enforce a community standard against such rants, but I wonder if those rants are what inspire people to write code and contribute (unpaid) patches...