Full Circle Associates

Imperfection is part of our online communication. Alan Levine posted a classic story of how email flames erupt so easily that show us we are mere mortals.

Warming The Hands Over the Flames of Email

E-mail flame wars (a torrent of angry, differing viewpoint exchanges) must be as old as the first listserv with more than 20 people on it. Whether you want to classify participants according to some phylum/species or not not, it is just human nature, and what happens in the loosely structured online environment. A reading of the chapter on 'Perfection' in Small Pieces Loosely Joined (SPLJ) puts some good light on the mixture of people, their human behaviors, and what happens in open environment.

Now go to his site and read the story! Here is the very apt closing:

I have seen it (flames, breakdowns) hundreds of times, and never expect it to change. That does not bother me, because for how many safeguards, systems, controls, policies are established, we are a species that tends to find a way through, around these structures. This is basic human nature, and while irritating or odd to observe, this is part of the SPLJ (Small Pieces Loosely Joined) notion that the Web by design is imperfect, as it shows its human traits, and that the yin in the open-ness of the net the spawns creativity, innovation,e tc, has a yang that includes email flame wars, 'vermin', rich spammers, etc."

In other words, we're human. From an online facilitation perspective, keeping this in mind is very useful. Nothing I can do, for example, as a n email list facilitator, will please everyone on a 1000 person list. And I will never have the insight or foresight to know what a human who joins the list has to offer, even when she or he starts out annoying the heck out of the group. We have foibles. We have different slices of our identity that we parcel out in strange and creative ways.

Maybe what we need is simply thicker skins and a deep breath every now and again. Oh, and flame proof jammies!