Saturday, January 14, 2006

When you ask a question about an open source product, ask the community, not one specific person. When you ask for one person to answer the question, then other people who may know the answer, might not help (in fact they almost never will, assuming you had some reason to want to know the answer from this one specific person). I've been doing this for many years. People almost never want to hear this, so I usually just ignore the questions, even if they have easy answers, because I want a community to develop, one where people help each other. That's the only way it can grow. And I want that kind of growth even more than I want you to get over this particular hurdle. 

On the other hand, if you see a newbie ask a question of someone specific, and you know the answer, and you are not the person he or she asked, go ahead and answer it. Assume the person just wants the answer, not really from anyone in particular. If they complain that your name isn't Linus or Brian or Alice, you can tell them that's true, but the answer is still the right one.  

I cringe when people call the leader of a community a father. Or when they say they learned more from the leader than they did from their parents. This puts enormous weight on the relationship, and for crying out loud, it's not a compliment, most people don't like their parents! People who write software aren't gods, they aren't super-human, they only have 24 hours each day like everyone else. And they aren't your mother or father. This Internet thing tends to amplify human emotions, it gets people's expectations up, and the leader almost always disappoints. So what. Go on with your life, and try to cut the guy or gal a little slack. Don't be on the wrong side of "no good deed goes unpunished."  

Continuing the BitTorrent exploration. "Are there any docs for the BitTorrent file format?" 

My MacWorld Expo badge. $45. 

Why "MacBook" is a weak name. 

Scoble shooting Scoble. 

1/14/02: About those XML buttons. 

BusinessWeek: Putting the screws to Google.