Wow, people on the plan9 subreddit are total dicks, wtf.
@eel I haven't used 9front much myself yet, but the community does scare me a bit too. Although, the little interactions I had with Sigrid and Aiju gives me hope, they're just amazing.
The plan9 subreddit might be just full of reddit assholes, I don't think it's necessarily answers from 9front people.
@neauoire @eel I think I can try to speak to this a little bit, but the discussion has a lot of historical context and is poorly suited to a thread of toots
The subreddit is pretty bad and probably not cat-v 9front people, but it's kind of indicative of how cat-v interacts with new members in general and the attitude/culture
I think @eel is reasonably concerned if you take cat-v as the main gateway, but this isn't as necessary anymore
@neauoire @eel cat-v has a habit of being really abrasive to new people who don't already 'know enough' or 'try hard enough' or fulfill some part of the cat-v world view
They have a habit of not being flexible on this, I firmly dislike this position
Not that all the cat-v are mean or bad! Not at all! I think most of them have good intentions and are generally good people
But the culture that's developed around it is not one I'm interested in forwarding or condoning
@neauoire @eel A few years ago I made a discord server with the intention of distancing myself and whatever 9 people I wanted to help/educate far away from cat-v unless they wanted to go there
I think the results speak for themselves and the community is, in general, very wholesome in helpful, if not a bit uneducated on average in terms of how 9 works under the hood
I don't think this is a problem, I think most of the people hanging around there are very kind and patient and want to be helpful
@neauoire @eel The complicated part, too, is that 9front is gatekept by cat-v in a kind of immaterial way that I've heard people try to argue against (anyone can send patches, etc.)
Some kind of 'thick skin' expected or something, who knows
The reality is that I found a very non-zero number of people who were willing to step into a different and more welcoming space who would never voice their thoughts or want to send anything to cat-v due to the abrasiveness, etc.
@neauoire @eel 9front is by far the most pleasant way to experience plan9, too. I think that objectively speaking it's far better maintained and refined than 9legacy - and 9atom has been dead for years
But cat-v is shaped by a few and has a long lasting influence from people
Anyone can take the code and run away with it - as evidenced by the ANTS project mycroftiv made - with the public grid project that followed http://9gridchan.org/
@henesy @eel That's great, I hope others stumble on the discord before thinking looking to reddit for answers. There seems to be a near critical mass of folks doing good and accessible work on plan9 these days, it's what got me into it, and I'm sure others have felt it too.
Nearly everyone I spoke to asking for help has been amazing, my reaction to the reddit threads is really in constrast with my own experience. I don't like seeing newbies getting shots down or refused help.
@neauoire @eel I hope so, too - or any other space that is welcoming and more open to people who are just genuinely interested, but may not know much
I was able to breach into plan9 and get into it because a handful of very kind and patient people took time for me on and off cat-v and helped me get started on the pi, well before 9front was supposed to run on it and miller was at his first version :)
@neauoire @eel It's all kind of complicated, too since 9front fundamentally diverges from 9legacy in some ways where deep/systemic changes have been made - such as with authentication - which are maybe backwards compatible, but don't worry about being so - which is fine
I almost exclusively use 9front and do a lot of my hobby development on it, but I have barely interacted with anyone outside of the discord or public grid chat
@neauoire @eel People like aiju, mycroftiv, ori, etc. do an amazing job of being helpful and welcoming and I appreciate them immensely
There are very good people in the community and while the deepest knowledge is definitely centered in cat-v, you can get most of the info/help you want/need from other platforms
@henesy @neauoire @eel I was there in small times; I know why we're like that, for better or worse. Someone in cat-v was dangerously close to working himself to death trying to appease the constant influx of drive-by demands from a stream of people who never stuck around. It was horrible to see. At the same time everything we did was regarded by the Old Guard as a direct personal attack on the original architects. We built walls. Maybe they've outlived their usefulness. It wasn't malice.
@mkhl @neauoire @eel and this is a shame, really, not on you, but on the community
it's a systemic failure to provide and environment where people are free and encouraged to explore and learn at whimsy
plan9port is a very shallow imitation on top of unix of a plan9 environment, really just a set of aesthetics on top of a monolith - which is fine, I use it :)
the real compositional fun/beauty in plan9 can really only be appreciated through immersion, but the barrier to entry is unfortunate
@neauoire @eel I will say also that I think cat-v/9front as a community are misunderstood in a lot of ways in that people like kurt do a really good job of taking explicit anti-fascist stances, etc.
that said, I do think many of the aesthetics adopted are unhelpful and haven't aged well, a 9front project without much of the 1940's/1980's-esque aesthetic imagery, etc. while part of what it is, isn't really helping anything
@henesy @neauoire @eel This sort of thing is the best possible outcome, from my perspective. Everyone always gets mad at us for not doing enough, but the last thing in the world we ever wanted was control. All the gatekeeping is to protect the people we care about, to phalanx up and make sure the internet doesn't wash it all away. Setting up other places to do shit is excellent and necessary. I don't want a "9front community" so much as a dozen communities with different styles/priorities
@henesy @neauoire @eel We're like this after half a decade of (mostly 4chan) showing up and eating up a tremendous amount of people's time and energy. There were only a handful of us, but people expected the kind of response you'd get from a whole cadre of users and experts -- and then they'd get FURIOUS when we failed them. We've been spamflooded, DDoSed, so much more. The worst is when people show up and expect us to defend something Uriel wrote... I never even agreed with him half the time
i haven't had much contact with the 9front community, and i'm not on reddit so i can't speak to that either. i've enjoyed reading the 9front manual though. i think mycrofitv's work is really interesting. at this point i've lost interest in working on a linux distro in favor of plan9- and inferno-related stuff.
aside from that, i've met some nice people recently at the intersection between gemini and plan9.
@neauoire ah, it seems i mixed up plan9 and 9front
@neauoire @eel You'll have a decent time with Plan 9 communities provided that you allow yourself and others the opportunity to experience them on your own. You may find free-thinking people on the sticky side of labels such as 'cat-v'', 'grid', '9fans', and so on.
Expect disagreement. Demand learning. You'll be fine.
@neauoire Y'all post so much about plan9 that I think about giving it a try now and then... but yeah, community does not pass the vibe check
@flip you don't have to use 9front, or you could see the merveilles community as its own micro plan9 community.
@neauoire this is true, and may eventually work, just had to be hit in the face with these lessons of where not to go first
@flip but don't go on readdit for help.
@neauoire tbh one of the reasons i haven't checked out 9front yet is that i'm scared the community is full of reactionaries. 80's-style computing often attracts those very suspect types, apparently