It's not about being "told to be nice". It's about setting a shared understanding of norms. It's about whether the kinds of jokes allowed among members are "a

It's not about being "told to be nice". It's about setting a shared understanding of norms. It's about whether the kinds of jokes allowed among members are "as raunchy as you please", "polite jokes only," or "none". It's about whether you're expected to work out differences in private chats, address them in public, or bring them to a moderator. It's about whether your comments on a code review started by another member have to be addressed by the committer before the review can go forward. Any time you think the way you do things in the open source project (or any other kind of community) you contribute to or run is The Natural, Obvious Way Everyone Does Things, you're probably wrong, and some other people or projects do things exactly the opposite way and think that's just as natural and obvious.