[tokyo1000]

What is Nim's community like? I ask because I first learned about Nim a few weeks ago when some people were chatting about it on Slashdot. One comment [http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=6771453&cid=48860921] quoted from that day's Nim irc logs and well it was a little disturbing. There was a lot of insulting and name calling going on and it didn't leave a good impression on me. I don't want to judge the entire Nim community of course but I was taken aback by those many very negative quotations. I don't think I've ever seen that kind of animosity in the Rust irc channels I mean.

[jwecker]

In my experience it's very responsive and rational. It benefits as a language from being opinionated which is sure to ruffle feathers from time-to-time. Obviously not as big of a community as some others, but that hasn't been an issue for us.

I've seen heated flamewars about important issues rarely, about non-important/emotional issues only very rarely and only in IRC (where the current official policy is "we're a new language so don't kick someone out unless absolutely necessary"). More often with Nim you'll see the occasional "wtf- who implemented this? it needs to change to ---". To be honest, IRC isn't the best place to judge a "community"- trolls and good people venting have disproportionate voice there. And to be honest, if that exchange referenced was disturbing... just hope you never have to be involved in a decision with the Linux kernel team or (the most abrasive example I have first-hand knowledge of) the Apache development team 10 years ago ;-)

Notice there's only one comment there from Araq and it's trying to de-escalate things. If you were to pop onto IRC and ask something technical or philosophical that wanted a rational response Araq or many of the others not represented in that slashdot comment will most likely answer very politely and rationally within a minute or so (I think he's in Germany though? so timing may be an issue).

I think a better "feel" for a community can be gauged by the tone and quality of blog entries coming out and threads in github issues / pull-requests than IRC snippets.

That and the fact that if you decide to use Nim based on its technical merits then you _are_ the community- and at this early stage you can easily influence the tenor of discussions and decision-making for good if you choose.

[Argorak]

Rust takes a completely different approach to this. If you behave badly, you're out. Even on IRC. It also keeps discussions direct and accusal-free most of the times.

It's one of the reasons I chose Rust as the next community to work in. I have zero tolerance for such things and hate being in discussions with people that cannot - well - discuss. I just don't want to waste my time on such communities.

Given that Rust now has a surprising number of meetups around the world (Berlin alone has a regular learners group with ~ 25 attendees weekly (some regular, some new)), they have a knack for good community building. And keeping insulting behavior to zero is one important cornerstone of this.

I've been doing community org and tracker triage for quite a few years now: you _can_ and _should_ judge a community by their community spaces (IRC, trackers, bulletin boards) and not by single-person publications (GH, blogs).

[chipsy]

Everybody was embarrassed about that day. It was a lot of toxicity over an issue that had already been resolved in technical terms, and dragged on for hours, but Andreas was mostly gracious throughout. I give him a lot of credit for being willing to trade blows with aggressive users without using Linus-style shame tactics himself. However there is also some recognition of how disruptive it is to allow discussion to spiral out of control like that. The channel is considering a more policy-driven approach to handling these kinds of situations. It has never banned anyone in its history to date, but it may have to cross that bridge soon.

[gokr]

I am from the Smalltalk community (very, very friendly) and just recently got into Nim but my experiences so far has been positive. Sure, more "heated discussions", but I have so far attributed that to possibly younger participants and also a strong IRC presence. I would also say that most of the harsh language I have seen has had a "tongue in cheek" tone to it. Also, I would claim its a very selected few people that like to engage in that kind of heat - thus not representative in any way. But also good that its brought up - I don't like such a tone either.

[codexon]

I would say it is unfair to judge any language by their IRC channel unless they are core members of the group.

In my experience IRC channels being rude is the norm rather than the exception.

[nnethercote]

> In my experience IRC channels being rude is the norm rather than the exception.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Rust has a very clear code of conduct (http://www.rust-lang.org/conduct.html) aimed at avoiding exactly that kind of rudeness, and it has so for a long time. As a result the #rust IRC channel is a very pleasant place to be.

[pekk]

In my experience many IRC channels are fine. If you run a project's IRC channel, there's really no excuse for forcing users to deal with a bad community, and a bad community is an excellent reason to find another project to spend your time with.

[gfasdgsfd]

You're right, a more hands-on approach is needed. We've discussed it a bit, and no opposition has been raised to using +q more often.

[keyle]

I've hung in the nim community for a few weeks and I've found them extremely helpful. You do get heated arguments but it goes to show the passion. Do not let a few individuals showing off their bullying skills turn you off from a wonderful programming language. IRC is IRC.

[throawai]

You've been hell banned. Message the mods. Best of luck.