That doesn’t apply to Linux communities on Lemmy though, but I meet a lot of Linux communities, that are toxic and beginner-unfriendly. People, who have voluntarily decided to maintain a community, behave like I broke into their house at 3 AM with my questions. If I ask a question, there will be a 20% chance to get any relevant response, but a 100% chance of being nagged with some bullshit. It especially applies to the behaviour of mods. For instance, a dude was messing with me because I have searched for a binary on the official internet database, instead of quering it via package manager.
I wish I could just avoid junkyards like that, but I can’t: I haven’t found another active community for Void Linux.
As far as I can tell from my experience, it is something specific to Linux or IT communities.
So why is it like this?
In the Linux community, it’s mostly the people who are developing the software who are also supporting the forums. To them, the forums are a way of communicating with others who are also working on improving the software. So at the end of the day, to them the forums are doing their job when people are contributing new content and ideas and making their lives easier.
Unfortunately, people new to the forums are going to be there to get assistance, asking questions about the stuff these people documented specifically so nobody would have to take them away from creating neat new things to hand hold them through using the older things. And most of these people aren’t technical writers or even communicators.
If you were somehow in a forum with a bunch of Windows, Android or macOS developers, you’d probably find the same level of toxic before long.
Because it’s not about you. It’s that you’re following the same learning curve of hundreds of others before you, and it causes these people to have to repeatedly stop what brings them joy to explain the same thing to yet another person. Or, you’ve got a new question. THAT means that nobody likely has the answer, and somebody needs to figure it out and then document it and then point you at the documentation, instead of doing what they want to be doing in their limited free time.
The Linux communities that aren’t like this tend to be small, or have a large education contingent, or are privately funded and so have professional communicators managing the forums.
It’s not a Linux thing at all. I have a lot of different hobby interests and I find gatekeeping everywhere. I don’t even think it’s limited to hobbies. Gatekeeping seems to be a natural human social behaviour.
Idk about that. Every time I’m on an Amateur Radio board even the newest most repeated question is often answerd earnestly by multiple people often with enthusiasm and quality. If a community actually recognizes and accepts that they want to onboard new people, they don’t treat new people like burdens.
I see that as essentially having a community norm against gatekeeping. It’s not a feature of every community and it needs to be intentionally maintained. Gatekeeping in that light is a kind of Hobbesian state of nature behaviour that is being deliberately policed.
There’s so much denial here. Linux users even have their own pidgin for being toxic. “your fault: wrong distro”, “pebkac”, “skill issue”, “works fine on MY system” (same models can have different sound, wifi, and bluetooth chips). They can’t even get along with each other when different distros, init systems, display servers, etc., are discussed.
Sure, it goes on elsewhere: in Religion and Politics which is why both are banned from discussion in many bars/pubs.
I think you misunderstood me. I’m not saying that gatekeeping doesn’t exist in Linux communities. It absolutely does, and I wouldn’t quibble if you said Linux was rife with gatekeeping.
What I’m saying is that gatekeeping isn’t unique to Linux in any way. Gatekeeping is everywhere, and I argue that it’s a default social behaviour that arises in communities above a certain size, unless specifically guarded against through community norms.
Everywhere on the Internet at all levels can be toxic. Period.
Yes, but some linux communities are like andrew tate levels of toxic. But instead of hating women, they hate people who don’t know linux.
It would be like andrew tate starting a womens support group, but then still acting like andrew tate. The women coming out of that support group would be confused and bewildered by why people voluntarily choose this.
I remember my first time learning linux existed was in 2005. I posted a message, with zero knowledge at all about linux, and asked what people like about linux. I was trying to decide if I even liked the concept of a non-windows OS.
The first person who replied, said “WE LIKE LINUX BECAUSE WE FUCK YOUR MOM BITCH!!!”
Cool.
And I didn’t try linux that day.
because OS nerds were the original gatekeepers of the internet. they were gate keepers prior to game forums when the internet was still new. It’s like waking a vampire that is 9000 yrs old and looks more bat than human and all it knows how to do is screech and hiss.
cause of the gatekeepers
There are some communities that are made which aren’t made for beginners. They are made for in depth fans who want to have conversations deeper than helping new people getting into whatever. Moreso, if they haven’t hit an Eternal September event, then new people have to adapt to the old culture rather than the other way around.
I imagine that Linux is esoteric enough and picks various platforms which keeps an Eternal September from happening. Because of that, they aren’t going to bend to new users like other online communities are forced to.
The loudest voices are the ones you hear. There’s a lot of young angsty kids who have gotten into Linux and then become the vocal majority, while wiser folks are off doing other activities that don’t entail berating new comers.
Back, in good ol’ days (5 years ago, or so), if you were a software developer you could ask any question on Stackoverflow, by any, I mean any question worthy of time of other users. If your question was considered too easy you would meet multiple beginner unfriendly answers. The portal is probably dead right now, I didn’t bother checking. It was killed by the AI since it will answer any of your simple questions and praise it instead of telling you that you should read the manual. AI is often wrong, but it helps a lot with the issues that most Linux geeks would consider unworthy of their time.
I don’t think it’s Linux-specific. There’s a lot of dickheads in society. If you create a community around a particular topic or hobby, then most likely you’ll get people there feeling arrogant/superior about their skills in that hobby/topic/etc and wanting to gatekeep it. It happens for a lot of things.
Why are some groups of humans toxic?
Linux people are just humans too. same ratio of assholes to catgirls as the general population. (mostly) if you have an ass in a group, the catgirls tend to leave and other asses aggregate. Toxic group is born. Just happens, and as long as you don’t depend on that group, just avoid them. if you do depend on the toxic group, ignore as much as possible, and start looking for a way out.
It’s a decentralized community made up of people who refuse to show empathy to anyone who was born in any computer based communities such as Windows or MacOS. It’s the angry nerd dwelling effect sadly.
Because they are annoyed. Imagine getting asked the same thing ten times over and then again, especially when said thing could be easily googled or resolved by reading the manuals.
