A side point, on the snap-response blowup angle: most of the worst flame wars I've seen or been involved in had a small number of people going at it back and forth rapidly, such that everyone else came back from lunch or whatever to an already huge pileup. I've thought that there should be posting quotas on some platforms, and one flame-prone list went to daily-digest-only in a successful bid to prevent those pileups.
My experiences are sadly similar. I’ve also seen a deterioration in email standards over time - much of what you describe wasn’t a problem even a decade ago. I don’t think we should underestimate time pressure and the ego depletion that comes from having to process dozens or more emails daily while code-switching among students, departmental colleagues, and research collaborators.
In a weird way, that time dependence almost gives me hope-- it suggest that the issue might be with people who have adopted the form relatively recently, and still might figure it out.
I say "almost" because some of the worst offenders in terms of unduly hostile readings and replies have been at this pretty much as long as I've been on the faculty email list, so...
I can never make up my mind about why asynchronous digital communications have not become a central mechanism for deliberative conversations in small-to-medium sized organizations that have some degree of democratic or representative styles of decision-making. Particularly faculty committees, departments, etc.
Email is only one platform or structure for asynchronous discussion--another is the classic threading message board. I've always felt, going all the way back to my own Usenet and BBS days, that the advantages of having the first two or three rounds of deliberation and discussion about an issue in an asynchronous format were overwhelming and obvious, to wit:
a) It solves the impossibility of scheduling--not just the difficult problem of finding a free time but also the inevitable intrusion into work-life balance that having to find a time that everyone can meet face-to-face will entail.
b) It allows more discussion *if needed* of a difficult issue than can be easily accommodated in a 45-minute face-to-face meeting, and often a more thoughtfully composed or expressive discussion at that.
c) The most important advantage: asynchronous conversations are polyvocal. Meaning, everybody can get their say; it's hard to "talk over someone". It's easy for a few very vocal people to dominate f2f conversations (men most frequently) and even if everyone's being very respectful and restrained, only one voice can be heard at a time. If you open a thread in a discussion, ten people can compose their responses at the same time, and all of them can be 'heard'.
Now, I can see a few downsides and maybe those are one reason that faculty are generally completely disinterested in using email or message forums to do any kind of deliberative or planning work. One is that all of those advantages I cited can become burdens if they're heavily used--if every discussion has ten people typing walls of text at each other, then the time spent reading and responding quickly becomes truly overwhelming. Another is that email and message board threads can become confusing if they go on for too long, and it can be hard to trace back what was said in a discussion at an earlier juncture.
But I think a lot of it just comes down to familiarity and practice. I'm used to sorting signal from noise in busy message boards, I type fast and compose as I think, etc., so this seems natural to me. A lot of my colleagues make limited use of social media or avoid it entirely, they find writing laborious, and they're nervous about taking a position on something without being able to "see the room" and figure out where people are at.
I should probably note that we've had reasonably good results with collecting feedback via open Google Docs where faculty can type comments on proposed policy changes, or just open-ended requests for feedback. That expands a little bit outside the "usual suspects" in terms of WHO comments, and the actual content of the comments seems to be a little more calm and considered.
That's part of why I think the illusion of immediacy is a big part of the problem-- those open documents aren't nearly as likely to turn into a complete clusterfuck as pseudo-live email discussions are.
A side point, on the snap-response blowup angle: most of the worst flame wars I've seen or been involved in had a small number of people going at it back and forth rapidly, such that everyone else came back from lunch or whatever to an already huge pileup. I've thought that there should be posting quotas on some platforms, and one flame-prone list went to daily-digest-only in a successful bid to prevent those pileups.
My experiences are sadly similar. I’ve also seen a deterioration in email standards over time - much of what you describe wasn’t a problem even a decade ago. I don’t think we should underestimate time pressure and the ego depletion that comes from having to process dozens or more emails daily while code-switching among students, departmental colleagues, and research collaborators.
In a weird way, that time dependence almost gives me hope-- it suggest that the issue might be with people who have adopted the form relatively recently, and still might figure it out.
I say "almost" because some of the worst offenders in terms of unduly hostile readings and replies have been at this pretty much as long as I've been on the faculty email list, so...
I can never make up my mind about why asynchronous digital communications have not become a central mechanism for deliberative conversations in small-to-medium sized organizations that have some degree of democratic or representative styles of decision-making. Particularly faculty committees, departments, etc.
Email is only one platform or structure for asynchronous discussion--another is the classic threading message board. I've always felt, going all the way back to my own Usenet and BBS days, that the advantages of having the first two or three rounds of deliberation and discussion about an issue in an asynchronous format were overwhelming and obvious, to wit:
a) It solves the impossibility of scheduling--not just the difficult problem of finding a free time but also the inevitable intrusion into work-life balance that having to find a time that everyone can meet face-to-face will entail.
b) It allows more discussion *if needed* of a difficult issue than can be easily accommodated in a 45-minute face-to-face meeting, and often a more thoughtfully composed or expressive discussion at that.
c) The most important advantage: asynchronous conversations are polyvocal. Meaning, everybody can get their say; it's hard to "talk over someone". It's easy for a few very vocal people to dominate f2f conversations (men most frequently) and even if everyone's being very respectful and restrained, only one voice can be heard at a time. If you open a thread in a discussion, ten people can compose their responses at the same time, and all of them can be 'heard'.
Now, I can see a few downsides and maybe those are one reason that faculty are generally completely disinterested in using email or message forums to do any kind of deliberative or planning work. One is that all of those advantages I cited can become burdens if they're heavily used--if every discussion has ten people typing walls of text at each other, then the time spent reading and responding quickly becomes truly overwhelming. Another is that email and message board threads can become confusing if they go on for too long, and it can be hard to trace back what was said in a discussion at an earlier juncture.
But I think a lot of it just comes down to familiarity and practice. I'm used to sorting signal from noise in busy message boards, I type fast and compose as I think, etc., so this seems natural to me. A lot of my colleagues make limited use of social media or avoid it entirely, they find writing laborious, and they're nervous about taking a position on something without being able to "see the room" and figure out where people are at.
I should probably note that we've had reasonably good results with collecting feedback via open Google Docs where faculty can type comments on proposed policy changes, or just open-ended requests for feedback. That expands a little bit outside the "usual suspects" in terms of WHO comments, and the actual content of the comments seems to be a little more calm and considered.
That's part of why I think the illusion of immediacy is a big part of the problem-- those open documents aren't nearly as likely to turn into a complete clusterfuck as pseudo-live email discussions are.