There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
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Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#2[deleted]
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#3> When we join a community that feels like a good fit, it's easy to assume that we all share the same values, but that's almost never the case. It's also tempting to think that because you're "with your tribe", that you should like everyone, and everyone should like you. But for a community of any size, that just won't be true, and hoping for it can only lead to disappointment.
Yes; see Five Geek Social Fallacies: https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#4Nowadays I try, as much as I can, to not be bound to any single "community". With the world being polarized as it is, the communities, no matter what they are centered around, are becoming very tribal in nature, sometimes wading straight into cultishness. I don't like many phenomena which plague many communities, and try to avoid them as best I can.
Communities can be full of hypocrites who can't stop talking how diverse and inclusive they are and how everyone should feel welcome and safe, and at the same time either engage or be consciously oblivious to backstabbing inside — as long as the appearances are kept.
Communities can be poisoned by newcomers who would like to reform them from the ground up not a week after joining.
Communities can contain influential members with whom you are assumed to be always agreeing, and you can be expelled for not being thrilled with their ideas. And you are expected to be aware of everything dear leaders write or shoot videos about.
The outsiders may like to cherry-pick some behavior they label "problematic" from more prominent community members and label everyone as the carrier of such behavior.
Some communities would like to drag you in and have you commit to them if you only want to contribute a little something.
I have a gas stove at home. I'm by no means a member of some kind of gas stove users community (does it even exist?). I don't share tips on using your gas stove better, and I don't spend time bickering about advantages of gas stoves over electric ones.
I sometimes do drive-by pull requests to some projects which I use myself and which proved to be useful enough. Doesn't mean I "belong" or am "bound" to those projects in any shape or form.
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#5Projects have functioned just fine without elaborate governance structures. If a project is mature and the work is done, suddenly "improvers" appear, misquote Popper and write long texts about the elusive "community".
It starts innocent, but always ends badly like in the famous Orwell novel. Productive people move on to the next project or only produce proprietary software.
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#6It's not clear to me what problem this post is intended to address
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#7It's not clear to me what problem this post is intended to address
That there isn't a single Perl community but rather communities that lack a shared behavior standard and that each has its own culture.
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#8> I don't think we should talk about "The Perl Community", but rather "The Perl Communities".
That's like saying that "cities" don't exist, only "neighborhoods".
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#9Nowadays I try, as much as I can, to not be bound to any single "community". With the world being polarized as it is, the communities, no matter what they are centered around, are becoming very tribal in nature, sometimes wading straight into cultishness. I don't like many phenomena which plague many communities, and try to avoid them as best I can. Communities can be full of hypocrites who can't stop talking how div…
100%. I use some online communities to learn about my hobbies - such as woodworking. The woodworking subreddit used to be my go-to place to learn about the skill from others.
That being said, they have very firm views about a certain brand of table saw, and will be slightly (and politely) combative if you justify using something else.
All groups have this issue - it's very, very, very easy to become an unhealthy echo chamber when it's all online. I believe it's because people automatically project their own emotions, beliefs, and standards onto comments from other humans. In other words, my theory is that online nonsense is so easy to fall into because everyone seems to think, contrary to reality, that they're the only person online.
Also, gas stoves absolutely are better than electric ones.
Re: There's no such thing as “The Perl Community”
#10> I don't think we should talk about "The Perl Community", but rather "The Perl Communities". That's like saying that "cities" don't exist, only "neighborhoods".
I take it like this:
There's no New York City community. There's no Bronx community. Both of those political units are way too big for communities to exist at that scale. It isn't diversity, although both of them are diverse, it's Dunbar's Number and the limits of the human animal. They exist in other ways, but they don't exist as communities.