> The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
> By Stephen Leahy
> "Don't work too hard," wrote a colleague in an e-mail
> today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know
> (sarcastic), but I'm probably wrong.
>
> According to recent research published in the Journal
> of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a
> 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail
> message. The study also shows that people think
> they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they
> receive 90 percent of the time.
This doesn't surprise me. I've been using e-mail now for around 14 years. I've gotten into more than my share of flame wars and I've found that many of these are created when people misunderstand the tone of voice that they think underlies a message. The use of emoticons helps, but they are rather silly.
It should be obvious that e-mail is a deficient mode of communication because it can't convey all of the information that one experiences in a face-to-face encounter. Many people who know me first online are frequently surprised to find that I am a mellow, soft-spoken guy in person. E-mail turns some of us shy people into pit bulls online for a variety of reasons.
Many flame wars are started by people looking for trouble. Other flame wars become flame wars because an exchange of email messages violates the usual tone of the list. LBO-talk tends to be fairly contentious in a civil way, but many of the messages here would be considered flamebait somewhere else.
The type of flame war that annoys me most is the one where people start by discussing issues and then a person or persons starts attacking the other person personally. Perhaps this is an innate human trait, but I've found myself accused numerous times of attacking people when they initiated a personal attack despite my best efforts to depersonalize the discussion.
Chuck