A long time ago at my Mom’s trendy fast-growing church, the preacher talked about Moving the Dot. This means, recalibrating your strategy every year, so that you’re always targeting (say) 23-yr-olds. That’s a different audience every year. It means you aim to please the people you want to join, not the people already there.
In contrast, my old church was still run by and calibrated for the people who founded it 50 years ago. That church has since folded.
Much of the Open Source community is looking like my old church these days. Insist that the culture stay the same because you like it, and that community will die with you.
Aim for a culture that makes new members feel comfortable and welcome, and the community has a future. What’s more important in your open-source communities – you, or the project’s future?
This article by Elizabeth Naramore explains how it works: making someone feel uncomfortable isn’t wrong, but it can be detrimental. http://naramore.net/blog/uncomfortable