Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
Back in 2006 I read that people don&#x27;t understand the intended tone in emails. I&#x27;m assuming it applies to most text based communication, and is one of the reasons I have devalued email and comments.<p>The key quote:<p>&quot;According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I&#x27;ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they&#x27;ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.&quot;<p>I think this means we overlay what we think the intended tone was meant to be on top of the email, and usually it&#x27;s more to do with us than the content of the email, and I suspect in Coraline&#x27;s case it was uniformly negative due to unrecognised prejudice. I would suggest that in the corporate setting, if you&#x27;ve not got a relationship with the author of code you shouldn&#x27;t be able to feedback initially as text, but instead either in person or on the phone. In that way you get the relationship between reporter and coder off to a good start, and follow up text communications will have a better chance of working.<p>I would actually go so far as to say no-one in a corporate setting should be communicating with each other as text without a phone call or a  meeting to introduce each other.<p>Here&#x27;s the article that&#x27;s stuck with me so long:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2006&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-secret-cause-of-flame-wars&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wired.com&#x2F;2006&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-secret-cause-of-flame-wars...</a>