As a result, the agenda is often set by the smallest, not the largest, group of Netizens, and so is the tone and style of public discussion. Although the public discussions on Slashdot and other websites are often raucous and hostile, e-mail from Lurkers almost never is. Lurker e-mail can be plenty critical and challenging, but the style and tone of people who communicate one on one is radically different from postings on public forums, often dominated by hostile, frequently anonymous, mostly young, overwhelmingly male messagers. For better or worse, flaming is an adolescent geek rite of passage. It will never go away, and shouldn't.
Free sites tolerate even obnoxious speech.
Since writing for Slashdot, I've been counting e-mail. Writing about the difficulties of learning Linux, I got more than 1,000 posts in a single week following two columns about how difficult the process was. The difference was jarring. Many of the Lurkers writing me were people who believed I was under continuous and vicious assault because they read the public postings beneath my columns. When I wrote back to say that the response to my writing on Slashdot was overwhelmingly, and from the first, appreciative and generous, and that reading e-mail here was a treat because it was both nice and smart, many people are incredulous.