TLDR: Some eggshell-walking vibes are starting to crop up amongst Zig enthusiasts. It might be healthy to have a no-eggshell zone.
I’ll just type off the top of my head here, so bear with me.
I’m a lurker, I’ve been playing with Zig since 0.11 or so, and reading these boards, the repo issues, etc.
I had a really nice interaction on the one thread I created where andrewrk chimed in he was super nice, every single reply was worth reading, and everyone was terrific to me, some FNG with a new account.
That said lately, I’m not going to bother mentioning specifics, we’ve obviously had a little hoopla here and there within Zig. Ziggit has shown some signs of some of that stressy outside stuff creeping in.
My observation of communities like this is that as they grow, and the members have more stake in the primary subject, two things are needed to maintain stable and productive discourse:
- Members bonding outside of the specific topic at hand
- Why? 'Cause if you go to sleep after having a nice back and forth with some folks about your shared interest of kayaking or yo-yo’s or cars or whatever and then wake up and see a thread you vehemently disagree with you’re not just bickering with a username – (not an AI em-dash I just write like this) you’re bickering with your yo-yo buddy.
- Pressure release valves.
- Give folks a place to get mad at each other within reasonable bounds of civility. Contain the drama. We’re not on Reddit here, we won’t get the kind of amplification or drive-by posting that turns a community having an in-the-family argument into genuine destructive chaos.
I don’t want the technical threads being diluted or gunked up with irrelevant replies, I don’t think Ziggit should become a social network, nor do I think we should let genuinely malicious personal attacks be tolerated.
I do think that this could be a place with a specific little section for what is an overWHELMINGLY positive group of people who all are passionate about a shared interested to let their hair down a bit and just… relax.
As always, I’m very open to being told to shut up when I’m way off base, so feel free. 
- Jas
