Gotta love it: http://blog.travismurdock.com/2010/01/wiki...elines-for.html

And even better - a former WP administrator offers wise insight!

Wise insight indeed - given that User:Travismurdock (T-C-L-K-R-D) has only made 4 edits in two years, none of them substantive, I suspect he's not exactly practicing what he preaches if you know what I mean. If anything, he's probably practicing what Mr. Kohs preaches!

I'm sure he's a nice guy if you meet him in person...

Which one, Travis or Kohs?

I never met a Wikipedian in person.

Most Wikipedians are nice in person, if only because the actually disfunctional ones won't show up, and in person it's much harder to be an ass and get away with it

It's difficult to estimate what portion of "people encountered on the internet" are assholes, as questions about which assholes are distinct people usually remain unsolved. The rudest percentile of an on-line population typically will inspire others to speculate (or flat-out assume) that some of them must be sockpuppets. Folks on WP, in particular, tend to reject the notion that so many individuals could be that odious (owing, perhaps, to a disproportionate population of shiny happy hyper-conformists who've never held a full-time job).

Even in the real world you generally don't know whether somebody is an asshole to everyone or only seems that way to you. Or maybe their culture has different behavioral expectations than your own, fair enough.

But, if I focus on the observable data, ignoring the anecdotal and speculative, I could begin inferring which environment is more hostile, based on the assertion that 70–80% of the people I encounter in real-life are assholes. Or at least they seem that way, maybe because they're harder for me to ignore, and because they don't just go away when I close the window.

Or more simply it could be the way people become so much easier to detest the more you know and learn about them: what they look like, what their voice sounds like, which støøpid name their parents gave them, etc.

Familiarity breeds contempt!