One of these days I'm going to write the huge long rant about how the word 'meritocracy' is actually used in open source to mean 'ogliarchy' and how if people really believed in evaluation of people by merit alone they'd be a lot less hostile to newcomers. And then I will post it, and I will turn off my internet for two weeks :P

But seriously, "we're a team and we support each other" is absolutely it. If we make it unpleasant for people to code with us, why would people want to code with us? And I would rather a dozen newcomers-to-programming who are eager and willing to learn and enthusiastic about the project and the product than one burnt-out, bitter, jaded 'rockstar' who screams at anybody who doesn't do something perfectly the first time, even if the 'rockstar' were chewing through all the incredibly complex projects. :)