6) Fanboys giving people shit, especially when the *actual gatekeepers* (e.g. committers) aren't; are the absolute worst.

Shut your fucking mouth. Stop Typing. Go To Hell.

7) This just in, gatekeeping by people who are committers is also bad. Stop being dipshits, and pushing people who are volunteering their time and trying to participate; from participating.

Help submitters, or STFU.

8) while I'm at it, not everyone is "men", or "guys". Maybe you don't mean it to be exclusionary, but it *is*.

Other people do use it to be mean and a jerkface. How is someone supposed to know the difference?

@phessler did I miss something? I probably did. I don't pay attention to much.

@basepr1me the whole "Microsoft's war on plain text email in open source" thread and commentary about the article.

@phessler ok, I saw the title. Thanks.

@phessler
I'd like a new word for male men, like "woman/women", and have "man/men", derived from "human", be neutral and include all humans.

I also know that I'm not alone in interpreting and using "guys" to include everyone, regardless of gender/identity, and not just men who identify as male.

Of course I'm also aware that dipshits use words to be mean, the way you described. The same kind of jerkfaces also often use gender neutral words to describe lgbt+ persons as things rather than people.

@phessler
In my mind this relates to the following; As someone who was bullied in school but learnt how to shrug it off, ignore the bullies or, when attacked, fight back, I have some ideas around not just standing up to bullies but also help the bullied do so themselves.

I'm skeptic to the idea of cushioning since the world is in many ways an ugly place and, in some situations, it can have the undesired outcome of not only leaving the bullied less prepared but also giving fuel to the bullies.

@phessler
I'll revisit this, since these are thoughts and ideas that I want to explore and challenge.

I know none of this is easy and that I'm privileged in being able to handle bullying the way I described. Not all of my friends were as fortunate, but we were a nerdy bunch who stuck together and were happy in the company of each other regardless of how others perceived or treated us.

@phessler I'm more than willing to help submitters who follow mail.html guidelines, for example. I'd even be willing help them to do that, but it's pretty ridiculous for someone to wander into a new project and expect developers to stop everything and change their workflow and accommodate them because 'plain text' is too hard, especially for people who work for organizations that require signing contributor agreements, creating a new account (Google/GitHub), etc, real barriers to entry.

@phessler I agree with you that attachments shouldn't be rejected, honestly that ship has sailed and even ports@ workflow has adapted to that reality, many people whine about bugs@, but we live with it because photos are often the best we can get. Other lists should follow (e.g. tech@), the question is whether that'll be before or after MIME support in mail(1) remains.

There is a point where developers, who are also volunteering their time, should be afforded the luxury of hitting the 'd' key.

@brynet tech@ does allow attachments, so that's fine.

And absolutely, there is no obligation for volunteers to help. Hit that 'd' key as much as you want.

My point is don't belittle them, either directly or indirectly.

@phessler Well, I guess I'm guilty of doing a little of that indirectly, but I'll save that noise for IRC and Twitter. ​

@brynet honestly, I'd appreciate it if not.

A lot of potential contributers will check out the usual places, and if they see insults to them, they'll not contribute.

And worse, other people will think this is encouraged behaviour, and parrot it themselves. This is how we got our bad reputation. Because we were shit, then people copied us being shit.