I don't claim that my personal definition should be canonical, but when I see posts that violate it, I'm going to speak out, and you should do the same. ESR sa

I don't claim that my personal definition should be canonical, but when I see posts that violate it, I'm going to speak out, and you should do the same. ESR said it better than I can: Odds are you'll screw up a few times on hacker community forums -- in ways detailed in this article, or similar. And you'll be told exactly how you screwed up, possibly with colourful asides. In public. When this happens, the worst thing you can do is whine about the experience, claim to have been verbally assaulted, demand apologies, scream, hold your breath, threaten lawsuits, complain to people's employers, leave the toilet seat up, etc. Instead, here's what you do: Get over it. It's normal. In fact, it's healthy and appropriate. Community standards do not maintain themselves: They're maintained by people actively applying them, visibly, in public. Don't whine that all criticism should have been conveyed via private e-mail: That's not how it works. Nor is it useful to insist you've been personally insulted when someone comments that one of your claims was wrong, or that his views differ. Those are loser attitudes. There have been hacker forums where, out of some misguided sense of hyper-courtesy, participants are banned from posting any fault-finding with another's posts, and told "Don't say anything if you're unwilling to help the user." The resulting departure of clueful participants to elsewhere causes them to descend into meaningless babble and become useless as technical forums. Exaggeratedly "friendly" (in that fashion) or useful: Pick one. From http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html