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Nathan Williams's avatar

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.

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George Musser's avatar

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.

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