I agree. There are genuinely intelligent people out there who look up to Linus and people like him. And the problem is that they look up to these people and id

I agree. There are genuinely intelligent people out there who look up to Linus and people like him. And the problem is that they look up to these people and identify with their behaviour because they want to be seen as uncompromising geniuses. They identify with a contrarian attitude and view conventional social idioms (for a lack of a better word at the moment) as ineffective in technical discussions. And so telling these people that the way they are behaving is not appropriate is essentially viewed by them as a personal insult. It all ends in a very divisive, two-sided argument. The problem with Linus isn't Linus; it's that people want to be like Linus. They want to be seen as strong, assertive, and uncompromising technical leaders. They don't want peoples' feelings to interfere with their work. They view themselves as contrarians and will seek to identify with leaders in their community which reinforce their world-view. And the problem with that is one of misplaced attribution. It's not wrong to use wit and a little strong language in a debate. Christopher Hitchens, a famous contrarian, employed such tactics from time to time with great effect. The difference however between someone like Hitchens and someone moderating a contributions to an open source project is that Hitchens was trained in rhetoric, elocution, and debate. He knew how to use insults and jabs in appropriate situations with practiced intent. Someone who views themselves as a contrarian and identifies with someone like Hitchens or Linus is prone to believe they understand these things when in fact they do not. Very few schools teach such subjects today and I suspect even fewer programmers have ever bothered to take them. However articles like OP's don't serve to forward the discussion. If we attempt to tell people who consider themselves to be intelligent contrarians that they are behaving inappropriately then they will immediately appeal to their heroes' success. This only starts the discussion off as a personal attack and devolves it into a polarized argument. Hardly useful. Instead there must be a way to convince ourselves that losing your temper on a mailing list and denigrating the efforts and skills of other contributors is not the proper way to behave. There are other, more effective ways of being assertive and uncompromising that won't insult people and cause so many needless flame wars.