“The Hype Cycle describes the way that new technologies and projects are perceived over time, if they do a good job of handling themselves, going from a technology trigger, inflated expectations, disillusionment, enlightenment, before arriving at “the plateau of productivity” – a state where there is no more hype and the new technology is simply a normal part of our lives.”

 

The perception over the past few years that Gentoo is dying is in reality Gentoo’s arrival at the plateau of productivity. Hype has gone away and remaining is a distribution with a true niche that fits into the broader Linux ecosystem.

Of note: volunteers aren't paid to ignore anyone, so Seth's point about being paid to ignore trolls doesn't apply. I also think it meshes poorly with the thought of creating a community or a positive environment.

Works great! Configuring lbdb correctly was a bit of a hassle, but I can now query a directory server (the Exchange one at work, meh) for people from within mutt.

This came up at the GSoC mentor's summit earlier in my session on assholes (although I don't think it quite fits the definition), and it seems that it came up again in the FLOSS foundations meet-up at OSCON.

"Do the math. This is one meeting, and while you might pull off a meeting win when everyone’s calmed down, you’re spending the first 30 minutes of the meeting in ALL CAPS, and here’s the bad news: a majority of the team is having similar experiences. Most of the folks interacting with this person are spending their time trying to figure out how to keep this person from going ALL CAPS rather than actually getting work done.

After a time, this results in even more damage. People stop scheduling meetings with this person. They stop traveling to their part of the building and, again, I’m not talking about one or two people here, I’m talking about the majority of the team."

"These statistics calculators are free to be used by anyone in the research community at large. They are offered humbly in the hope that they will contribute in some small way to the advancement of science. I hope you find them to be useful!"

Similarly, you need to quickly build the same level of trust with our community. Do you have the tools it takes to hack into the code? and do you know how to use them? When a contributor uploads a patch to our mailing list or to our tracker (preferred, but to make sure you get noticed please post a link on the mailing list too) he builds instantaneously the same level of trust that the unknown cab driver builds with every new customer: he implicitly shows that he has the tools (hardware, operating system, internet connection, coding environment, repository access) and that he can use them for basic operations.

I think you should fire this person immediately. Okay, maybe give him exactly one warning.

You’ll find someone else who really knows this stuff. No doubt about it. And firing one intransigent bully is a lot less painful than shutting down an entire division next year because he paralyzed your decision-making.

Deep technical competency is overrated compared with the ability to make excellent decisions and to create a culture where forward motion is valued and personal initiative is rewarded.

The good news is that the bully knows this, and the only reason he gets away with being a bully is that he thinks he’s got you bluffed. Call his bluff and odds are you’ll have a much more cooperative team, top to bottom.