News Stop with the ego-centric flame wars

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/02/14/flame_wars/

 

I can believe that!

 

I could believe that line of thought, however there are some that will always be looking to flame bait anyways.. So in those cases, it won't really matter as I see it whatever the tone is. It still wouldn't stop the flamebaiters. Many will always argue for however long to come.

 

The emotional valence of written text is notoriously difficult to interpret though, unless it is made explicit. This is why smilies came into use...

Meta-communication (communication about communication) is the tricky bit. Face-toface we can use facial expression, tone of voice, gesture, posture, pattern and pace of speech (in fact, remember that 93% of communication is non-verbal) that we cannot resort to in text-based communication. We have smilies to help us along, but some geexperts have proposed that HTML should have emotional Meta-tags to convey the mood or feeling of a certain text. In this respect, on the forums we sometimes notice the creative use of emotional tags such as : [SARCASM] [/SARCASM] or other clever ways of trying to convey emotional and other meta-communicative context.

Basically, writing (or at least, writing in a clear, expressive and intelligible way) is a skill. Writing on forums, I find, is a particular skill because the reader can (and will) respond and interact with the writer. You get a sort of emotional engagement that you don't get if you just write a text and remain blissfully unaware of how the reader reacts to that. So demands are made on a complex mix of verbal intellectual reasoning ability and social skill and expressiveness. Some people can clearly be seen to be possessing both, some to possess one but not the other, some to (painfully) obviously lack both.

As for flame-baiters: just because someone invites you to a game, does not mean you have to join in. The best way to deal with flame baiters is to collectively ignore them.

 

LOL - I've been spouting this theory for years now /ego

 

Beg to differ, the best way to deal with them, is to goto hollywood, pick up your movie check, then fly around the country beating the living crap outta every single one that slags you off

/movie reference

 

I like the photo very cute.

i do wonder if i am fully understanding what someone writes and what emotion is sposidly used to understand it properly.

 

Perhaps we should have a "mood status at posting" in the left-hand Avatar pane.

Sort of like this:

 

I can vouch for my mood affecting how I read certain posts or emails...

...or IRC conversations

 

Yes! We need that!

 

I actually really like that idea Nexxo, I'd be surprised if its possible to implement, but its a great idea

 

I think that would leave it up to the writer to tell you what type of mood he/she is in, which is often a difficult task for some people. [screams] I AM NOT IN A BAD MOOD [/screams]

*sheepeshly looks at the ground*

Ok well maybe I am...

 

Nice idea Nexxo. Also, for a superb demonstration of this, hop onto irc. I don't think I've ever seen so many things get taken the wrong way.

 

But in IRC, its hellishly funny at the same time

 

I take what you're saying on-board, but it does spoil the joke. I love dead-pan humour, adding an <IRONY> or <SARCASM> tag to an already OTT remark gives the game away too easily. A few web articles have caused outraged criticism here and elsewhere until some kind soul has pointed out the spoof indicators.

However, with some people and even nations (I'm thinking of the Swiss, not just the Americans and Dutch) irony goes down like a lead balloon, so I'd better add a as and when.

 

I think the tags in the side would help out. The amount flaming here is not that high compared to other sites. I believe what account for a lot of it is the type patrons the site attracts. In other forms i seen really bad levels of flaming

 

The Mood at time of Post tags are not really a serious proposition, guys... I was joking. Hence the smiley...

 

Interesting read tbh... Kinda why I try and use smilies where ever possible either when sending text based messages (email/sms/IM etc...)