The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

Mz6 writes "According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time. "That's how flame wars get started," says psychologist Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago, who conducted the research with Justin Kruger of New York University. "People in our study were convinced they've accurately understood the tone of an e-mail message when in fact their odds are no better than chance," says Epley. The researchers took 30 pairs of undergraduate students and gave each one a list of 20 statements about topics like campus food or the weather. Assuming either a serious or sarcastic tone, one member of each pair e-mailed the statements to his or her partner. The partners then guessed the intended tone and indicated how confident they were in their answers. Those who sent the messages predicted that nearly 80 percent of the time their partners would correctly interpret the tone. In fact the recipients got it right just over 50 percent of the time."

well, let's test it then

[Toreo asesino]

"I love Linux. It's great."

Serious or sarcastic? 10 euros for correct guess.

Not news to us, unfortunately...Oops!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kids, this is why it's so important to properly use your tags and your emoticons!"

And people still have misunderstandings.

The real question is...

[precize]

...will flamebait comments on this story be considered informative?

Waaan

[VAXGeek]

This is the best article I've seen posted in years! I thought /. was on the decline, but clearly it is just reaching its stride.

Ok, let's try this out...

[TimeForGuinness]

CowboyNeal solves all of my computer woes!

Choose:
A) Serious
B) Sarcastic

How flame wars really start.

[DeltaHat]

You suck!

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[muyuubyou]

Was that sarcasm? or are you just being a smartass?








</sarcasm>

This study makes one critical assumption

[Anonymous Coward]

That all flame wars erupt from somebody misunderstanding another persons tone in email.

In most of my experience, most flame wars kick in because of old fashioned beligerance. People see somebody that disagrees with them, and has the courage to say things that they wouldn't say to the other person's face, by virtue of being separated by miles of network cable.

Now everybody that disagrees with me is a G4Y A55FUK3R!

Re:How flame wars really start.

[TimeForGuinness]

No, you suck!

It's Vim's fault

[H4x0r Jim Duggan]

Actually, most flamewars are caused by Vim being much worse than Emacs.

The Illuminati

[ettlz]

Since the end of World War 2, a clandestine, shadowy organisation known colloquially as "The Illuminati" has been secretly instigating and orchestrating all major flamewars. Conflicts such as the Tannenbaum Crisis, and the ongoing battles at comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy were all sparked by this bunch as part of their twisted plan to control the world packet flow through decreasing the SNR on the Internet, and when it finally collapses, replace it with their evil commie New World Protocol. Fight the evil!

You know who they are.

They know who they are.

Don't you people ever read Indymedia? It's all in there!

Re:Paranoia in theory

[lbrandy]

Man, all these jokes about the difficulty in detecting sarcasm are so funny!

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[s20451]

My in-depth study* of internet flame wars have shown that the root causes can be traced to these four men: 1 [tuxjournal.net] 2 [tomgpalmer.com] 3 [microsoft.com] 4 [aciprensa.com]

As a fun game, can you guess which one thinks he is the Son of God? (Hint: There is more than one answer.)

*By "in-depth study", I mean smart-ass remarks I thought up over my morning coffee.

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[KDR_11k]

(Note: This is my attempt at humor, if you don't like it you can KMA!)

Cool! New Acronym! That's "Kill My Aunt", right? Said, done.

Dickens didn't take any chances.

[zenwarrior]

Hmmm,...50-50? It appears Charles Dickens was no fool. That explains his following CYA:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...."

And in the same paragraph, he predicted Slashdot:

"...its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Re:It's Vim's fault

[mshmgi]

You are such an idiot!!!!! Everybody knows that Windows/Linux is much more contentious than your petty little VIM/Emacs squabbles. Why don't you start paying attention to the REAL issues - idiot!

You're an idiot. :)

[PIPBoy3000]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

At work, I find myself peppering my e-mails with these damn cute smiley emoticons even though I feel like a teenage girl (which I'm not, even on the Internet). Sometimes I'll respond with a terse message that basically says "I fixed your damn user error", and then add a smiley face at the end.

I think it means that I'm secretly passive-agressive, trying to cover it up with cute little characters.

:P

Re:It's Vim's fault

[just_another_sean]

I'd chime in here but I'm still waiting for Emacs to load so I'm not sure which one I like better yet.

TFA Generalizing?

[vain gloria]

Kids, this is why it's so important to properly use your <sarcasm> tags and your emoticons!

Well, when you're communicating with Americans, certainly...

semicolon right parenthesis

Re:Technology Fueled Escalation

[afaik_ianal]

What seems to be my problem with e-mail is that I send a message and I run the topic into the ground in that first e-mail (saying everything about it). Now, that's written in stone like a Slashdot comment. No backsies.

I don't have that problem, because I'm always right to begin with.

Re:It's Vim's fault

[aurb]

Now, now, there's no need to start a flame on whitch topic causes more flames.

Re:It's Vim's fault

[squoozer]

Everyone knows that Emacs is better. The real reason most flamewars start is the because Java is fast and better than .NET.

Re:well, let's test it then

[Conspir8or]

I'll test it too. "Ten euros? How much is that in real money?"

Re:2 Rules:

[dJOEK]

I'm taking the 50/50 chance here that you are a Simpsons fan:

"There is no emoticon for what i am feeling!"

Re:It's Vim's fault

[odie_q]

Unless of course you run Gnome on Linux instead of BSD...

Non slashdotter's response...

[aug24]

"Huh?"

"What?"

"Did you just call me a moron?"

;-)

A fifty-something bloke once cycled at me on the pavement. I asked him "does your mother not let you ride on the road yet?" as he passed. He turned round, cycled back and hit me, for "saying something about my mother"! It took me an age to work out that he simply did not understand what I was getting at.

I vote we all use emoticons, and then ban people without typing skills from the net. And the pavement.

Justin.

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[Landshark17]

Wait, wait, you forgot a big one! http://www.whitehouse.gov/ [whitehouse.gov]

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[heinousjay]

Yeah, nothing says 'please be my friend' like intentionally being weird.

Now you tell me, what's my tone?

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[EntropyEngine]

Look! I don't need to read some crap article telling me about what causes flame wars.

It's the fact that most of the people in 'ere are dicks .. and you all know you are, OK?! [/sarcasm]

Re:well, let's test it then

[Toreo asesino]

http://www.google.es/search?q=10+euros+in+pounds [google.es]

Keep pressing F5 and watch it grow! :p

Re:PRECISE DICTION

[CausticPuppy]

The skill to write well is a thousand times more valuable today than most people give it credit for.

Did you just end a sentence with a preposition?

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[Catbeller]

How old? I wanna know if I'm closer to Depends usage than you are. What's the cutoff age for taking daytime classes in college, I mean, the age they call security if they catch you talking to a female student?

Re:2 Rules:

[Anonymous Coward]

We should be concerned with deterioration of language to the point... cannot help to reverse any possible erosion of language arts skills... re there any English teachers in the Slashdot audience...?
I like prescriptive grammarians ;-) Is there a doctor in the fish?

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[Ced_Ex]

KMA = Kick My Ass

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[TubeSteak]

www.tomgpalmer.com

T. OMG Palmer?

Is that guy's middle name really OMG?

Re:It's Vim's fault

[ArsonSmith]

With statements like that your sarcasm is just too obvious. If you were to switch Emacs and Vim around you may have a better flame starter because there are some mutants out there that thing Emacs is better for some bizzar reason.

I honestly think they are trolls because I have never met someone who actually used Emacs for more than the 10 seconds it takes to find out how much it sucks.

Re:well, let's test it then

[Dire Bonobo]

> "Ten euros? How much is that in real money?"

10 Euros = 25.6305 Brazilian Reals

You've got real cojones to ask a question like that, though. 5,963.91 of them, in fact (10 Euro = 5,963.91 CRC).

(Yeah, okay, so they're Costa Rican Colones. Still funny when you haven't had your morning coffee...)

Re:The Illuminati

[Thomas Miconi]

Illuminati suck ! As any sensible conspiracy theorist will tell you, you should ONLY ever use the time-tested, tried-and-true Freemasons in your conspiracies ! Illuminati are such a joke, they were fashionable for exactly 2 mins back in the 70s and then everyone realised how much they blew. Freemasons run circles around Illuminati ! Illuminati make your computer slow and give you bad breath ! ILLMUNIATI ARE TEH SUXXORZZZZZ !!!!111!!1!!! FREMEAS0NZ REWLLLLZZZZZ !!!1!1!!!!!!!!!!!

(What, I'm just trying to bring this back on topic !)

Thomas-

Re:Not news to us, unfortunately...

[Talla]

I've never meet an atheist or agnostic who didn't believe in something he or she could not properly support.

Of course I do, if it seems likely. I'm just not religous about it.