That's what sucks so bad about this, fundies. You're always very helpful, and you're always very irritating. And sure, oftentimes, you're trying to be playful, or maybe the person in question has earned your particular variety of caustic honesty, but it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, you make it unpleasant for prospective contributors to be in the chat. I feel it, Robert feels it, YAL feels it. Maybe, as you say, YAL had other reasons to leave and you were just the straw that broke the camel's back. Generally, you can fix that with an apology. You've gotten better about giving those, and no one has thrown them back in your face (except maybe Rusky, because yeah, that bridge is going to take a thousand years to repair). An important aspect of apologizing is not repeatedly doing it again.
You should also recognize that Rusky isn't the only person crying to me about you. I can't imagine you disputing that when shit heats up, you tend to escalate it. Actually, I can imagine you disputing that, because every time I point it out to you, you claim you were just doing tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye. That doesn't make the situation any better and it's not how you earn points with people. Logic is normally on your side in these disputes, but logic seldom has bearing on feelings, and while you discount them, feelings are a huge factor in when and how users will contribute to the project. You can't just write them off as bullshit; they factor into reality.
If you would get better at recognizing when enough is enough, the world would be your oyster. People can be fun. You can rib people. But you have to know who you can rib about what. Everyone has their own sore spots. You can call those "triggers" and pretend that this is all some conspiracy-level kindergarten feel-good horseshit. I will not deny that such a camp exists; every movement has extremists. But that's not at all what this is about. We're not trying to participate in some movement. You don't even go against the morals of the movement. The primary reason I continued to put up with your behavior (in spite of complaints) is because you were never deliberately racist or sexist or otherwise disparaging against any group. We're looking at the feelings of the rational individuals you choose to attack. You even boast it as your special talent—finding people's sore spots and using them as leverage. You do this regularly as a form of engagement, like some child who believes that every kind of attention is positive attention. And it brings a lot of people to resent you.
To be clear, this isn't about any one person. The question is, if you stop fostering this environment of perpetual antagonism on the Discord, will more contributors show up?
And unfortunately, there's only one way to answer that, because you just will not leave people alone. It may be that you honestly are incredibly bad at handling social situations. That would be pretty sad, and you're getting no benefit of the doubt there from Rusky and co because (A) he's sick to death of you, and (B) all of us are convinced that you are smart enough to where you shouldn't be so bad at picking up social cues. You need to recognize that you can't rationalize away how people feel. It's so simple not to bother people. No one's forcing you to interact with them; if you ignore them and stop taking jabs at them, you'll get along fine. Even Rusky would eventually move on. No one on the Discord is so petty that just the act of you speaking upsets them.
This isn't a big change I'm asking for. And you're not even 30; you're by no means too old to make simple changes to the way you conduct yourself to just get along with people. And yes, some of the people I'll be asking you to get along with have short fuses, and a couple of them appear to be legitimately stupid. But there's dignity in being polite with belligerent idiots, and I've seen you do that. It sucks when it becomes a routine, and if you see that happening, I will gladly ban those people. But generally, the really dumb ones leave quickly. It's people like Rusky that you have trouble with. It's when you see potential for contribution that you start to harass people.
Don't.
Just because someone is capable of assisting doesn't mean they are willing, and just because they are willing doesn't mean they are eager. You can (and, if we're being honest, do) get a lot of mileage out of Rusky. And if you don't, well, Robert does. I'll try not to speak too much for Rusky and YAL, but I'm sure they'd agree with much of this: I work all day. This request I have for you? The laborious task of getting along with others? That's rolled into my job. When I get back from work, I don't have a whole lot of energy to spend actively contributing to a project; the energy I have will depend on whether I've been putting up more with bitching from my customers, my toolchain, my coworkers and superiors, or just life at large (mower breaks down, ants on my fucking table, junk everywhere, shit to replace). Everyone has their own life to live on top of whatever volunteering they're doing on this project. You seem to already be under the impression that you are not the only cause of YAL's despair on that particular day, so it seems you're aware of this to some degree. But when someone's already had enough, your ribbing (even if you're joking) can be too much. And again, simply apologizing and then backing off is likely all it takes to fix that.
I will cede that, yes, many of our problems fall on me. I am not a manager. Most of the glue that holds this project together is the fact that our contributors and users all want this project to succeed. This has made it possible for me to be very low-touch in terms of disciplinary action and making sure the team gets along—functions required of a conventional manager. I'm not well-equipped in general, and you are a challenge to which even a typical manager is not well-fit. That's something I could improve. Apart from that, I will grant that canthelp left because I left. But what you should acknowledge is that I left because while I was my busiest with college, you were giving me tons of shit every day and then explicitly told me to leave because you apparently thought that you and canthelp would just run the project without me. Or maybe that was just another cry for attention. I don't remember, but I actually did completely leave, for over a month if I recall. I caught up on my work nicely without that headache in my life. But without me there, whether because they lost hope for the project or didn't want to put up with you, they left. But you can't deny your role in that, because I wouldn't have left if you hadn't made being there so unpleasant.
Same story for YAL. Maybe he had a bad day at work. Maybe he was tired. You made it unpleasant for him to be in our Discord. He left. Was it logical? Maybe not; he clearly cares about this project, and he could have blocked you or muted the channel instead. Is it justified? Absolutely. No one needs that stress in their life.
From where I'm standing, the easiest way to lower stress was to remove you from the equation. Personally, I feel as though it's worked well; I don't have to put up with your banter until I'm good and ready to open this thread and see what you're on about. Robert's actually sending me things in the main Discord instead of over chat and email. There's a sense of peace and normalcy. Why do you insist on taking that away?
You are one of the best contributors this project has had. I would love to have you back any time after you're done waging war on prospective contributors' personal sense of peace (this includes Robert and me). There are ways to motivate people without inducing stress, anger, or anxiety. This isn't just feel-good karma mumbo-jumbo; burnout is real, and it slows and craters projects.
Until then... good luck.
