I've long thought that the overblown hostility towards key figures in our community is largely down to a misperception, a fear that there is a tight-knit cabal in charge who look down upon the rest of us, actively ignore our opinions and strive to keep us out of their bright, shiny, cinnamon-smelling world.

This fear, of not being part of the "in-crowd', probably echoing unhappy memories of not being one of the cools kids or the jocks or the cheerleaders in high-school, results in expressions of either slavish hero-worship or outright hostility. Those who choose to be hostile often adopt largely meaningless issues (usually cynically planted by the handful of people with a specific commercial interest in knocking Automatic or the WordPress project) and launch full-frontal, deeply personal attacks, their fury stoked by the belief that they will be ignored anyway. It is always fun to watch their embarrassed climb-down when they DO get a thoughtful, well-reasoned response from, you know, an actual, real-life human being.

I really like the WordPress open source project, it has made my life substantially better, it has been interesting to watch its evolution and it is exciting to think about the future possibilities - if you believe in the democratization of publishing and the free movement of ideas, there is nothing more important going on right now. I am very grateful to all the thousands of people who have contributed to the project or to the plugin and theme eco-systems. I am also appreciative of the substantial and ongoing contributions that Automattic and other companies have made to the project and am happy that they have found a way to make that commercially viable. As companies go, Automattic are a great company and my sense is that they are intrinsically decent people, folks I would enjoy meeting even if WordPress had never happened.

I have not met Jane. I think we have exchanged a few words on Twitter or blog comments but that is all. I saw her at WordCamp Ireland but didn't say hello because she already inundated with people but, if I do meet her in the future, I would not expect her to be anything other than a nice, intelligent person who happens to be good at the job of sometimes calling the shots and making decisions.

I did get to meet the PollDaddy guys and Donnacha O'Caoimh who was particularly generous with his time, genuinely open and funny about the mad trip that they are all on. He actually shocked me at one point by remembering some random bit of feedback, about premium feature pricing, that I had submitted about a year earlier, just some spur of the moment thoughts submitted via the WordPress.com contact form - they really do listen to us.

We all need to remember that these are normal folks who, through hard work, enthusiasm and listening to their users, have found themselves in an extraordinary position, commercially and culturally, but we all own the WordPress project every bit as much as they do. Sure, they benefit financially from their work, but they are not taking anything from any of us, we only gain; attacking someone whose daily efforts benefit you is really dumb.

It should go without saying that the open source project is philosophically open, and has attracted passionately open people but Automattic, too, is open, just about as open as a commercial company can be. As individuals, I sense that if I really needed to contact Matt or Toni or Jane or any of the Automattic team, or indeed Mark, Westi, Andrew, Ryan, or any of the designers or contributing developers, I could do so and probably get a reply, even though they don't know me from Adam. I don't believe that any of the "celebrities" in the WordPress world actually think of themselves as anything special or better than us, they are regular folks, just like us, probably embarrassed by the hero worship and exasperated, sometimes upset, by the hostility.

It would massively improve the quality of the debate around WordPress if people could remember, as they type, that the person you're attacking is actually a decent soul with interests much in line with your own and you're going to be bloody embarrassed, as Jayvie was, when you meet them in person.