 So you've probably heard a lot about how to get started in open source how to get help how to interact with communities Well, I'm kind of here for the opposite of that I'm gonna teach you to recognize some anti-patterns and getting help by teaching you the things that you can do to not get Help in open source first IRC internet relay chat nice synchronous medium for chatting with your communities the great way to make sure that nobody answers your question is to ask for Experts go who here knows about Linux and then everyone who sees your comment will go I don't I don't know three things. I know everything else and no one will reply crickets Another great way to avoid help on IRC is to drop out of the channel immediately after asking I know networks are flaky you fall out if you really want an answer drop a link to your question on Stack Overflow or possibly Leave some contact info or just don't fall out Another great way to avoid getting an answer on IRC is just don't tell them what's wrong This actually applies quite widely to all of the media that I'm gonna talk about. So there's your summary for IRC now on mailing lists And forums how do you avoid getting help there? Well, a great tactic is to ask permission to ask your question. It's not like that's why the mailing list exists or anything Go where the experts aren't you have a Python problem go ask in the Ruby community Maybe they can help know don't do that and finally make personal attacks if you can scare everybody They sure won't add to your question say all your terrible your project is bad and you should feel bad And then they will feel bad and they won't help you So that's mailing lists and forums in a nutshell for you now My strategy is for making sure that your favorite bug that you're really depending on never gets fixed are similar First get creative with what we're in how you file the bug just like if they have a bug tracker on GitHub They wouldn't somebody's YouTube tutorial issue comments. Nobody will ever see it there next be tough to copy Make sure that your bug is only reproducible or you only get some steps to reproduce on some esoteric hardware that there's only three of them in the world They're all locked in museum basements and nobody can get access to them so If you're tough to copy it'll be hard to fix your bug and finally keep it vague again with withholding information If they don't know what's wrong or how to reproduce the problem. They can't help you fix it So finally, um, I'm going to suggest some hazards of Participating an open source now. How can you make sure you don't get all that much out of the meat space or brick-and-mortar community? Well, the first way to avoid getting the benefits of an in-person community is to stay home Congratulations, you guys have all overcome this anti-pattern by being here in this room if you're watching it on the recording It's okay. There's room to improve. There's more conferences Next scare people whether this means wearing a t-shirt that you says you hate everybody who looks like them or just like Seeming to have some something very communicable and coughing on everyone without covering your mouth if you scare people away, they won't come interact with you and you won't make friends and Finally the biggest Community involvement and pick pattern is to let your shyness win. So I hope that you don't do this You can absolutely show up to a conference sit there the whole time on Twitter or IRC not talk to anybody And you won't get as much out of it But the real benefit to showing up and to being here is that you're making friends and now When you need help with something you don't have to ask a channel full of strangers You get to ask your acquaintance or your friend from that conference So if you have problems with any of the projects I work on go ahead and ping me the slides are up there And I hope now you'll notice if you're doing any of these anti pattern things