The Secret Cause of Flame Wars
This is just a link to an interesting article in Wired (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70179-0.html?tw=wn_index_2) on some research on email communication (http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/fac/nicholas.epley/Krugeretal05.pdf). I think this is pretty relevant for this forum based on recent events, but it will also be useful to anyone who does a lot of email for work (like me). To summarize (since it's pretty dry stuff), the sender assumes the recipient will understand the tone of a message (sarcasm, etc.) 80% of the time, and the recipient thinks they've interpreted the tone of a message correctly 90% of the time. The study results show that in reality, it's only interpreted correctly about 50% of the time. So, a good portion of the time, both sides think everybody understands, and they don't.
p.s. I didn't go searching for this, I encountered this during my normal daily work research (ie. http://slashdot.org
) - talk about timing!
p.s. I didn't go searching for this, I encountered this during my normal daily work research (ie. http://slashdot.org
) - talk about timing!
Comments
You see the transforming car?
Mark
What is that supposed to mean? You think I'm fat? I'll get you "Mark" if that's your real name.
Warning...
It's a toy car, not a real one, just realized my somewhat inadvertant false advertising.
Mark
You know they'll sell a crapload of those cars in LA!!
Johnnie
ps...how can I get that toy car as my card protector?