[chipotle_coyote]

That's true. However, maybe the people you do want to interact with--or the people you should interact with in order to advance your project, whether or not you particularly "want" to interact with them--will also go away and leave you alone.

[ori_b]

With one side project, I've had people almost leave the project because I was being accomodating to someone who clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were getting frustrated with the constant low quality discussion, and one ended up private messaging me to say that either $IDIOT left or they were going to go. Another probably just dropped of without saying anything. Just showed up less frequently in chat, until one day they were gone.

Being nicer doesn't always help attract people that you want to interact with.

[nickpsecurity]

That's quite anecdotal. It might be true and work for you. I'd then ask if it's the general rule that maintainers being helpful to people who have more to learn is causing lots of problems. I doubt it given the huge ecosystems with beneficial results that came from software catering to such people.

Now, it might be quite different for those focusing on extra-high quality, reliability, or security. These seem to take a certain minimum amount of skill or determination. People being too nice might bring in people that are purely a drag. You and I both seem to be in that boat a bit. So far, the best path has been filtering out the chaff plus inviting skilled people or mentoring those with aptitude plus desire to learn. I'm sure I could learn more on people side to increase my effectiveness quite a bit. Like you, though, I need a certain baseline to be effective at the levels of success I want with the kinds of people that follow my work. Even if I was nice, the others would tell them off just to prevent damage from being done. Maybe nicely and with tips but the effect is still the same.

The problem when it affects communities with higher focus on narrow tech or high quality is worth further research by people interested in this stuff.

[ori_b]

First off, at least in my mind there's a difference between people asking good questions in order to learn, and people constantly making stupid proposals without taking time to learn enough context to understand why their proposals are bad.

And, yes, of course it's anecdotal, and of course it's not universal. I don't believe my preferences for interaction should be universal. The software world is big enough that I can go join places that match my tastes, and avoid ones that don't.

[nickpsecurity]

Good points.

[jancsika]

A lot of times when I start getting frustrated about low quality discussion, I try to reimagine the noisy participant as a kind of "human fuzzer". They have randomly wedged themselves into a corner with some of the unspoken rules of the community. Then it's (usually) sufficient to explicitly and (politely) articulate the expectations for participation and collaboration.