Problem with how threads are handled

Forums are useful, but they have limitations.
One of those most obvious limitations is the lack of real-time response form posters. This isn't necessarily a limitation as it allows users in different timezones to communicate without the need for both users to users to be online at the same time.

Forums remove some of the most important parts of human interaction. Those 'important parts' are nonverbal communication and response time. These signals that we receive from other people build the concept that one are talking to another human being. Without these, one is far less likely take into consideration the things that one would normally do when talking to a person.

The importance of body language is obvious, it conveys things that aren't spoken, but it is not necessary. The ability to read body language varies from person to person, there are many people in the world who can't ready body language at all. They still are able to communicate though.
Body language adds a great deal of information an interaction. In a conversation body language communicates to the participants in a the overall mood of the other person towards the listener or in the case of the speaker, what they are saying. In face-to-face interaction, body language is a large percentage of the actual communication. In addition to conveying information about the other person, body language also lets the viewer know that the other person is a real person. Body language conveys emotions and feelings. When one reads it they know that they are talking with a real person because real people have emotions and feelings.

The second is tone of voice. This feedback is one way at a time as it is can not simultaneously be sent and received like body language can. Nevertheless, it is still very important. Tone is the modifier for words. Different tones can completely change the meaning of words. Tones also convey emotion and feeling. Again, like body language it gives listeners the non-verbal information that reinforces the knowledge that they are talking to a real person.


Response time and tone are the relevant things here. Obviously when one is talking to a person, the person must be there. When communicating by test, the only way for the participants to know that someone is there is by their responses. On instant messengers, the response from the other person indicates that one is speaking to a person. On forums, this does not exist. There is nothing to re-enforce the knowledge that one is communicating with real people and so that concept breaks down and people do not consider others.
This leads to people just getting their own say, rather than considering what the other person is saying, they will just put their own opinion out there over and over again.1

When using text communication, tone is absent. This leaves the reader to assign their own tone to the text. Not everyone does this to the same extent. Some people assign strong tones and others do not. This often depends on how literal minded the reader is. The type of tone depends on a few things; what the reader thinks of the person sending the message, the mood of the reader and how they read language idiosyncrasies and slang.
Language idiosyncrasies, slang and other things usually have a tone to them when spoken. The tone in which they are spoken in can radically change the meaning of the words. With the absence of this tone it is up to the reader to determine what the person meant.

This presents a large problem, especially on forums. Instead of processing the message as something sent from another person, the reader processes the message as something written in their own way of communicating.
This is often a grave mistake as different people have different ways of communicating. Some people may use more formal language or a more aggressive vocabulary without really meaning for the message to be especially formal or aggressive. It's just the way they speak.

Due to this, when communicating over a forum about a subject that the participants have an emotional attachment to, emotional tones are projected onto the messages, especially negative ones. This is often a really bad thing, because most messages aren't sent with a negative tone and projecting one on to it leads to gross misunderstandings.

The reason for this is that message about a subject that a person has emotional attachments to or that should obviously have emotional tones is assigned these tones subconsciously because people can see that they should to be there.

It's far easier to be an ass to unresponding text than to a human.