If I were to be a despot, I wouldn't feel better, I would feel worse.
To quote the article, "I wanted to repay their effort with a thorough explanation about why I was turning them down, and doing that was itself exhausting" -- the author feels as if they need to do these things, and at the same time doing so is draining. Simply replying with "no, I'm not taking this" and closing it very well might make the author feel even worse because it's not like that contributor meant anything ill, it's not like they don't deserve an explanation... it's simply an imbalance that there's an order of magnitude more contributors than maintainers.
If the problems were clearly abusive people that could be blocked, the solution would be easy. Unfortunately, the feeling of "people care about this project, and I owe them respect, even if it's draining on me" isn't something nearly so easily solved.
If you want to program in the style you speak of, you wouldn't even publish the code in the first place. If the point of the code is as a hedonistic selfish art-form, it never needs to leave your computer. You can be a tyrant over your own code.
However, if you decide you wish others to see your code, use it, or learn from it... well, you clearly have a desire that others will use it, and now you're stuck between feeling as if you need to do X in pursuit of that, and burning out.
Frankly, I'd rather have shared my code, and learnt the hell that results, than to never have shared my code at all.
To quote the article, "I wanted to repay their effort with a thorough explanation about why I was turning them down, and doing that was itself exhausting" -- the author feels as if they need to do these things, and at the same time doing so is draining. Simply replying with "no, I'm not taking this" and closing it very well might make the author feel even worse because it's not like that contributor meant anything ill, it's not like they don't deserve an explanation... it's simply an imbalance that there's an order of magnitude more contributors than maintainers.
If the problems were clearly abusive people that could be blocked, the solution would be easy. Unfortunately, the feeling of "people care about this project, and I owe them respect, even if it's draining on me" isn't something nearly so easily solved.
If you want to program in the style you speak of, you wouldn't even publish the code in the first place. If the point of the code is as a hedonistic selfish art-form, it never needs to leave your computer. You can be a tyrant over your own code. However, if you decide you wish others to see your code, use it, or learn from it... well, you clearly have a desire that others will use it, and now you're stuck between feeling as if you need to do X in pursuit of that, and burning out.
Frankly, I'd rather have shared my code, and learnt the hell that results, than to never have shared my code at all.