On Wed, 26 Mar 2003, Lee Larson wrote:
> On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 01:03 PM, Ronald Broadwater wrote: > > > I am not familiar with internet discussions other than this group. I > > am > > amazed at the carelessness of the dialogue. I could never talk with an > > acquaintance with the tone and egging on that has occurred here. It > > has the > > emotion of a prelude to a fist fight. > > One thing I've learned is that you have to choose your words very > carefully in e-mail -- much more carefully than in face-to-face > conversation -- because a friendly face takes a lot of the sting off > strong language. It's very easy to rub someone the wrong way with > e-mail, and it happens for the strangest reasons. For example, I enjoy > having fun with words, but several people have written me off-list > saying things like "I don't want to go to a thesaurus everytime and > look up the meaning of a word." or "Why do you rub your education in > our faces by showing off your vocabulary?" > > I've just come to the conclusion that just about any e-mail sent to a > large group of people is likely to offend someone. But, if no opinions > are stated, the list becomes as much fun to read as a technical manual. > Let's just keep the discussions somewhat germane to the description in > the FAQ, which is pretty broad. It's a society thing. New concepts hit cultures and it takes a while for said cultures to adapt. You can see it in the swear words that younger generations use as normal parts of their languages, older generations don't adapt, and you definitely see it on the internet. I actually find the exact opposite problem to many of the ones expressed in this topic. I find discussing with people face to face is harder as it seems far more likely that we're going to end up resorting to blows. Email is far _less_ likely to be insulting etc, probably precisely because I'm from the first internet generation [27 in case anyone cares... 1993 was when the internet went bang in the UK, I think it was pretty similar in the US and that was when my generation was at university]. You can see it in the way I talk to people, I speak far too fast, because I expect them to be able to understand me no matter how fast I type^W speak. There are definitely some people on mail lists who get my goat though. Their rudeness shocks me and I grumble mightily that such rudery should not happen in a civilised society [ie the internet], but reading this thread makes me realise it's probably just because they're deeper into the net than I. Or they're just rude. I'm starting to come around to the RTFM philosophy. Rather than changing your ways and overly helping people, you do them more help by sticking to your guns and forcing them to adapt. In the RTFM philosophy you don't help people, you show them how to help themselves. Often by being obnoxious enough to drive them to help themselves :) Hen | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be April 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>.
