People can make "I know" sound like anything from a death threat to an erotic tease using everything which doesn't come through in text.
> In addition, the increased likelihood of participants writing in something other than their first language, increases the chance of misfired communication significantly.
Even within a language there's plenty of room for people to misunderstand: How much swearing is necessary to avoid sounding like a stuffed shirt, and how much makes you sound like you're too ignorant to be worth reading? Which specific words are comradely and amusing, and which ones are going to derail everything the moment they appear?
If two people have a relatively slight disagreement on that, you can end up with a rather loud argument over a horrible perceived insult, on one side, and some weirdo who got extremely bothered by an adult talking like an adult, on the other.
For if that were the case, YouTube would be a thriving beacon of clarity, when it clearly isn't. And as an effective counter-example of a only-written-yet-successfulish-conveying-meaning you have HN.
So no, communication by writing is not the problem.
It's certainly easier to get the 'road rage' mentality when writing, than when conversing in person. As well as losing information, communicating through text makes it more difficult to relate to other people as people. It can lead to people behaving in terrible ways that they'd never do in person. Road rage does a similar thing: ordinarily nice and well-balanced people can be enraged by other road-users, but would never have such a response walking down the street. (This was captured rather brilliantly by a comic [0].)
I wasn't the only one who was surprised to see that real-names policies (such as on Facebook) fail to get people to behave themselves.
I guess I should find friends in real life (also known as 'meatspace')
Note: that's literally what I think, I'm not trying to sound smug , neither am saying this ironically. Stupid limits of written communication, haunting me even here!
In addition to the problem of maintaining community when the number of people increases, I also think that it’s a function of communicating in writing, rather than in person.
I vaguely recall attempts at quantifying the loss of information when communicating in writing due to the loss of tone of voice and body language. i.e. even if your words are rough, your tone of voice and body language may allow you to be better perceived.
In addition, the increased likelihood of participants writing in something other than their first language, increases the chance of misfired communication significantly.