On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Marvin Humphrey <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm concerned by the somewhat personal tone in the heated exchange that went > past just before this, such as when Joe said, "No more stalling Chris", and > when Chris responded, "Get over yourself Joe".
On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 4:13 PM, Joe Schaefer <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm yelling at Chris today, but tomorrow I may be yelling at Marvin > for being too much of a coordination hub for this project. On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Mattmann, Chris A (388J) <[email protected]> wrote: > There's some missing context here I'd like to share with you. Joe and I know > each other and can handle each other's barbs. > > I appreciate your concern for > the situation, but at the same time just to let you know -- email is a > horrible > form of communication. It conveys very little context, very little emotion > (as the > "emotion" part behind it can be interpreted differently by just about everyone > that reads it), and even worse, it's not instantaneous, so distilling > emotional > meaning or personal meaning from it is an exercise I try not to engage in. I'm with Marvin on this. I was bothered by that exchange as well, and considered writing a response similar to Marvin's. I'm all for making fast progress, and I'm sure I have private conversations that would be judged much worse, but I try to keep them private. It's precisely because email offers so little context that it's important that public conversations on the public list be civil and polite. Even if the tone is acceptable to the immediate target, the rest of the audience might not be laughing along. --nate
