Communities can be full of hypocrites who can't stop talking how diverse and inclusive they are and how everyone should feel welcome and safe, and at the same time either engage or be consciously oblivious to backstabbing inside — as long as the appearances are kept.
Communities can be poisoned by newcomers who would like to reform them from the ground up not a week after joining.
Communities can contain influential members with whom you are assumed to be always agreeing, and you can be expelled for not being thrilled with their ideas. And you are expected to be aware of everything dear leaders write or shoot videos about.
The outsiders may like to cherry-pick some behavior they label "problematic" from more prominent community members and label everyone as the carrier of such behavior.
Some communities would like to drag you in and have you commit to them if you only want to contribute a little something.
I have a gas stove at home. I'm by no means a member of some kind of gas stove users community (does it even exist?). I don't share tips on using your gas stove better, and I don't spend time bickering about advantages of gas stoves over electric ones.
I sometimes do drive-by pull requests to some projects which I use myself and which proved to be useful enough. Doesn't mean I "belong" or am "bound" to those projects in any shape or form.
That being said, they have very firm views about a certain brand of table saw, and will be slightly (and politely) combative if you justify using something else.
All groups have this issue - it's very, very, very easy to become an unhealthy echo chamber when it's all online. I believe it's because people automatically project their own emotions, beliefs, and standards onto comments from other humans. In other words, my theory is that online nonsense is so easy to fall into because everyone seems to think, contrary to reality, that they're the only person online.
Also, gas stoves absolutely are better than electric ones.
Some time ago I tried to ask for advice related to my LCD TV. Then I found the "home theatre community" absolutely loathes my model. It's a fine TV that I got at a good discount, but apparently the only advice I'm allowed to get is "nobody should buy that model, so buy a new one".
You are definitely correct on not being bound to any one place. Anecdotally, I see some opinions on some slacks that I don't agree with but since I'm not bound to the place I don't mind too much. You can always bounce to one of the other groups for a time.
Yes; see Five Geek Social Fallacies: https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
It starts innocent, but always ends badly like in the famous Orwell novel. Productive people move on to the next project or only produce proprietary software.
I believe the people talking about and pushing "community" have good intentions, but there are hidden negative consequences that are almost never acknowledged.
For example, it can ironically make a big project feel less welcoming, because newcomers may be pressured to feel they have to become part of the community even though that's basically impossible - because, as this article rightly points out, there is not the community but instead a federation of many communities.
That's like saying that "cities" don't exist, only "neighborhoods".
There's no New York City community. There's no Bronx community. Both of those political units are way too big for communities to exist at that scale. It isn't diversity, although both of them are diverse, it's Dunbar's Number and the limits of the human animal. They exist in other ways, but they don't exist as communities.
