On 1/30/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86(a)comcast.net> wrote:
WP and its various interaction pages is my first
exposure to this type of
dialogue between and among persons. The whole of my past experience has
been, in person, face-to-face communication.
Ah. Ok. This explains the question somewhat.
To amplify something from my earlier comment, no forum which is a
complete anarchy on the Internet survives. This is true of other
forms of machine-mediated discussion such as IM, IRC, Usenet, BBSes,
email, etc.
There has to be a social contract, preferably explicit, but implicit
if not otherwise.
People tend to both be more aggressive in online discussions and to
take offense more easily; the lack of visual and audio clues in both
directions of a conversation is something which humans adapt in odd
ways to. The moderating influence of nonverbal communications falls
right away.
This is in no way local to Wikipedia; it's generic to online
text-based communications. Combining immediacy with text-only format
causes the problems.
--
-george william herbert
george.herbert(a)gmail.com