I've seen (and felt) the hostility too.

For example, there was a chatterbox discussion about encodings some weeks ago in which ambrus felt that you were flaming him (and you denied that charge).

A few weeks before that there was a discussion about Javascript in which jdporter felt that you were “twisting his arm”.

Back in April, I asked in the CB why the polls were no longer being refreshed. Your response was “tye does not recall seeing any poll suggestions from Arunbear”. You know fully well that there was no shortage of poll suggestions. There was no reason for me to make a new poll suggestion – it would have just gone into storage along with all the others. My question was a prelude to offering to help with posting polls since that is what was not happening. But you chose to have a go at me instead of having a useful discussion.

Then there was a time when you created a bogus consideration and as it was being voted on you remarked “Heh. So few passed the intelligence test.”

Going back in time further, I once mentioned in the CB that I didn't understand the purpose of one of the links in the editor's nodelet. Your response was “Just because you don't have sufficient imagination, it doesn't mean that there isn't a purpose.” I then asked you to explain the purpose, but you ignored me. Your response was not only unhelpful but also particularly insulting as I had already stated that I didn't understand the what that link was meant for.

You also post quite a few replies to other monks that have a condescending tone (and I'm not aware of any other senior monk who does that). Being civil costs you nothing. To be un-civil requires additional effort and you seem prepared to make that effort despite describing yourself as “lazy”.

If you're at work and a colleague mentions that they don't understand the purpose of feature X, then what do you do? Do you insult them? Do you ignore them? To most people that kind of behaviour would be considered unprofessional.

Why do you have a lower standard for relating to colleagues at Perlmonks compared to work? On the other hand you remarked last week that “I wanted to smack Josh and Dave because ...” (because their design wasn't to your liking), so it may be that you are abusive to people at work too (but some how I doubt that because people in the workplace have a certain amount of legal protection from bullying and harassment).

So what justifies your un-civility? Do you think (as your “intelligence test” remark suggests) that you are better than everyone else? Or does being chief administrator (hence accountable to nobody) give you some kind of licence to be abusive?