zlacker

I run a few OSS projects, among which one with 10k+ github stars that has a decent size community. While I recognize my own personality in Rich's post ("if you don't like my direction.. there's the door") for some reason I ended up running this project with the attitude that everyone I am interacting with their time, insights, and needs are just as important as mine. It's been very refreshing. It makes people very eager to contribute, and there's close to 0 hostile behavior in the community. It really works magic.

I have no doubt that Rich's time and his direction of Clojure are endlessly more important than the average community member, as a fact. But you CAN'T communicate this way! Interacting with someone where before you start there is the assumption that someone is way more important cannot result in a good interaction. Even if it is a fact, even if both people involved know it, you will be much better off if you act like it doesn't exist for the purpose of communication.

Of course, time is limited, but I find there is an art to giving short reactions that are still respectful in this way. And it is not like Cognitect entirely does NOT want there to be community interaction (like Rich himself says), so it is just a question of optimizing these interactions.