Open Source communities. Love them. Alpha males galore. 2 snippets I could resonate with:
Andy: There is the community-based and open thing and that seems to be generally agreed. Note that the members and board are largely regarded as a star chamber, and I kind of held this view. Now, I still hold this view. (suprised?). Thats my opinion, I think there is a certain closed cliquish thing going on. I will continue to state my disagreement with it. I will continue to state my disagreement with more bureaus and committees popping up all over the place. I'll state it on the lists, and I'll state it here. The fact that *you* don't agree with it and don't want it to color the perceptions of others is *your* problem.
Ken: Perhaps some people read Web logs inside an <imho> container in their heads. I try, but sometimes I can't; it's just impossible to separate what's being said from the attributes of who's saying it.
Oh, and the wise guy decides to keep his mouth shut and refers to prior art. Wise indeed, if you are involuntary dragged into an Alpha Male fight.
My opinion? One of my resolution for 2003 is: don't forget there's a human being behind that MUA, or you'll commit some MUA.
Update: tomK said this before: For the sake of honesty, I have to admit that I have been tempted to do that in the past. That was before I realized that the people writing and reading those mails were real people. They're not part of your PC, you know, they are real living human beings, with good qualities, sensitive points, and everything else that constitutes a human being. If you think about this right before you press ctrl-enter, you won't press it in many cases. ... which brings us back to Stefano, which brings me back to an unfruitful moment of my own Alpha Male-ship, which brings us back to the seminal think-twice-before-hitting-enter mail. Intertwinglyness :-)