> Don't judge community (especially one you don't know) by their worst member.
The community was massively represented in that harassment campaign targeting Actix. We can still read the threads and the bug reports that fueled that shit show. Things got so bad that distinguished members of Rust's core team felt compelled to put on their PR hat to work on salvaging Rust's reputation and do limitation.
It was not bad apples. It was a hallmark of Rust's community.
I don't believe in collective guilt. If 10 or 20 or 200 assholes out of group of 30000 do something stupid, do you sentence the 30000 or the assholes, even if the rest of community has distanced from it? You are generalizing actions of a vocal few to the entire group.
Also, sure Rust people care overwhelmingly about Rust crates.
Any large enough community will statistically have some percent of "bad apples". You're arguing as if those bad apples are a majority. And not a statistical footnote.
> I don't believe in collective guilt. If 10 or 20 or 200 assholes out of group of 30000 do something stupid, do you sentence the 30000 or the assholes, even if the rest of community has distanced from it?
You mentioned Reddit. Rust's subreddit had at the time over 80k subscribers. The subreddit massively piled on the maintainer of Actix. This harassment campaign was so massive that core Rust members felt obligated to write public declarations how Rust should invest in community building and, with the Actix case as an example, whether they could actually reject contempt culture.
It was not an isolated bad apple. Rust's community is renowned for being toxic, hostile and abbrasive. This topic is underlined time and again even in HN. It's not possible to hide this fact.
The community was massively represented in that harassment campaign targeting Actix. We can still read the threads and the bug reports that fueled that shit show. Things got so bad that distinguished members of Rust's core team felt compelled to put on their PR hat to work on salvaging Rust's reputation and do limitation.
It was not bad apples. It was a hallmark of Rust's community.