Some would say I use too many smilies, but I don't think so.
No you don't. Since 2003 I'm Admin on Dutchfs, a flight simulator website in the Netherlands and in Dutch of course.
Years ago I discovered an article somewere about things going wrong on forums. I posted it on Dutchfs and a lot of people recognised it.
Here's a rough translation:
Every now and then members have a dispute on forums.
Of course, we are all different people, different backgrounds, different language, choice of words.
Misunderstanding is sometimes what happens then, but the other day I learned it's even worse!
7% of our communication is by
written word, what we do here.
But in 'real life' we add gestures, bodylanguage and that's good for another 35%.
For the rest, 58%, we make ourselves clear with eyecontact, our voice, high pitch, low pitch.
No wonder it goes wrong every now and then. We have this 7% to explain the 100% of what we want to say!
Just asking a question, give an answer is no problem, but when emotions are involved, it's getting more and more difficult.
We have the emoticons of course, and maybe we can double this 7%
to 14%
by using them.
But then of course the other has to understand that 'you fool!
' is something different then 'you fool!
'
I can't remember were I found this knowledge, but if it's true, then we miss
93% of means of communication on a forum.
So maybe it's normal and we can't help it, that things go wrong (by accident!) sometimes..
Theo