Begin bug 16837

I believe that you've hit the nail on the head on several points. I would say that many newsgroup posts (not just COLA) frustrate me more than anger me. For many of the reasons that you mentioned.

What I find mildly interesting is that I'd be willing to bet that a large percentage of the people who post here are employed in a computer or IT related field. This would make their job clbuttification "professional" rather than something clbuttified as "tradesman" or "laborer."

I've worked for a half-dozen software companies and I have yet to see one where people talk to each other the way they do in newsgroups. If I acted the way some of these people do I figure that I'd be fired in 2-3 days tops. I may not always agree with people that I work with and vice-versa but we certainly don't treat each other the way people talk in newsgroups. Even complete strangers don't treat each other this way, and most of the people here are "professionals."

Even non-professionals don't treat people this poorly. Say you went to BestBuy or CircuitCity and asked a salesperson a question about a TV or computer. Imagine if the salesperson answered with "What sort of idiot are you? Even a moron knows that the XRT-4000 has that feature. Quit trolling and buy something you dip-poo." Yet this is a typical newsgroup response. (I've done it too.)

So I don't know what it is about newsgroups that brings out this sort of atbreastude and behavior. I wonder if this is what people are really like and they just "fake-it" and act civilized when they go to work. Or is the behavior at work the real-thing and people bring some sort of alter-ego to the newsgroups.