Today on #apache, a charming individual got /kickbanned for calling me a dickhead. I earned this moniker for answering his question not once, but three times. Apparently he was irritated that I did not know what his various TLAs and ETLAs were supposed to mean, and asked him to speak in full words.

Shortly after this, a non-participant lurker contacted me in private message, lecturing me about not being polite enough on the channel. Apparently he thinks that I don’t make beginners feel comfortable with their ignorance. Or something like that.

So perhaps I’m getting just a little too self-righteous, or something like that, but it seems to me that when I offer what amounts to unlimited free technical support, that it behooves them, not me, to be grovelingly polite. If folks feel perfectly comfortable insulting me after I give my time to help them solve their problems, it would not seem that anyone would be justified to lecture me about how polite I am.

I found both of these incidents to be so completely unwarranted, I was really quite taken aback. I realize that volunteering my time to help these folks does not make me any kind of saint, but I do expect to be treated with a little bit of respect for it. Perhaps this is an unjustified expectation – I don’t know – but I certainly don’t expect to be insulted or lectured for it either.

I guess you just can’t please everyone.