CSflim

I think the main problem in online communication is that people aren't actually as expressive through their writings as they actually think - primarily it is a lack of all of the "non textual" elements of speech - body language, gestures, emphasis, diction and so on. A huge amount of the meaning of the sentences we speak is tied up in these 'extras', and their online counterparts; emoticons and <B>/<I> tags are just ridiculously underequipped to deal with the level of subtlety involved.

I think that this goes a long way to explain the non-stop erruption of flamewars on improperly moderated messageboards and the like. I imagine two people having a heated flamewar, meeting in real life instead of online, and finding that though they differ profoundly in their beliefs, they manage to have a discussion which doesn't degenerate into screaming and namecalling. One of the key differences involved is that they can understand each other better. When one person makes a statement, its intention as a declaration of an unequivocal fact; just some vague il-defined idea being thrown out; or any of the infinite shades in between, can be more readily appreciated by its audience in the real life situation when they can hear the diction and see the facial expressions, gestures and body language compared to when they just have access to raw text.

So I think that when writing online (or in general really) we should constantly bear in mind that simply typing the words that we would say, if that person was sitting here in front of us, is not usually a good approach to getting our point across. Particularly when writing in an argumentative style, read back over what you just wrote and try to give it the most unchairitable interpretation possible - does it still come across as being as convincing and as reasonable and as level headed as you originally thought? When you made that blantantly offensive remark, is it fully apparent to all that your tongue was firmly in your cheek at the time? That hilarious sarcastic quip of yours; are you certain people will notice the sarcasm, given that it is not accompanied by a sarcastic tone of voice?

Conversely when reading anothers post, try to read it as chairitably as possible. Give the benefit of the doubt whenever it arises. Before leaping down the throat of someone for saying something outrageous - make sure that they actually said it, and that you didn't just think that they said it.

Of course there are other factors to take into account when wondering about the causes of online flamewars - immature people trolling and flamebaiting just for kicks, annonimity, lack of real consequences (such as social ostracization) for acting like an asshole (Theres a popular image that you see around which defines a mathematical equation along the lines of: Normal Person + Anonimity + Audience = Total Asshole).

Even though these latter factors are important in understanding argumetn on the net, I think that the impeded communication problem is one that can be addressed quite easily by individuals by changing how they read posts and how they write them.

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