The answers i get when asking questions on the #linux IRC channel are often useful, but the interactions themselves are awful.
They'll take everything you say completely literally. If your figure of speech doesn't reflect reality exactly, they're there to correct you. If you want a tool that does a specific thing, they tell you that what you want is wrong. Politeness and humility are foreign concepts to them. Everything is about hard, cold, blunt facts.
They're autistic, basically.
@thor Is this freenode?
@miwilc Are you going to read the logs?
@miwilc There seems to be a lot of people on there who don't have anything to do than being snarky on IRC. Their snarky attitude makes me want to adopt a "Hold your nose, enter, ask a very specific question and leave as quickly as possible" sort of approach, instead of, say, having a nice conversation. They're much nicer on the #ham and #electronics channels, in my experience. There's a humility in the interactions that's absent on #Linux.
@miwilc I suspect a part of it might be because hams and electronics people interact more with other people. Ham operators like technology but they also like to reach out, so they're less likely to be asocial. As for electronics people, many of them probably like to go to hackerspaces, museums and other kinds of social spaces, so they have had a chance to learn some manners too. #Linux? Based on their demeanour, they basically like this: https://snabeltann.no/media/-VjmU_P-pBToACmTBs0