When we talk about leadership and balance, we also need to talk about how we handle toxic behaviour in our midst and how we protect ourselves and our communities from it. As a full-time open source maintainer and project leader, I've sadly had to encounter many ungrateful, entitled or outright toxic people.

In this session I'll first show some examples, then share some coping strategies that I've successfully used to deal with them. I'll also share some things that everyone can do to help with responding to negativity.

Target Audience: Developers, Project Leaders, Open Source Users
Prerequisites: None
Level: Basic

Extended Abstract:
It's no secret that running an open source project has its dark sides, and one of these is having to sometimes interact with quite ungrateful, entitled or outright toxic people. As a project's popularity increases, so does the frequency of this kind of interaction, adding to the burden shouldered by maintainers and possibly becoming a significant risk factor for maintainer burnout.

I've been the project leader and maintainer of a quite popular project for almost ten years straight now, and had to develop the one or other coping strategy to deal with these interactions, in order to not let them drag me down and negatively affect my motivation and mental health. In this talk I want to first give a classification of the most common forms of bad and toxic behaviour I've seen, and then share my personal approach to dealing with them, explaining why this has worked for me along the line.

In the end, the viewer should take away some concrete advice on how to handle possibly volatile interpersonal situations in the context of an open source project and beyond without compromising on their own mental well-being.