[Steely Jim]

Well, the thing is, even though I do my field primarily in archaeological contexts, my interests are more broadly anthropological. I have a real, professional interest in observing, analyzing, and attempting to explain the socio-culturally constructed rules we invent for interacting with each other.

If you'd like, then I'd be more than happy to start citing peer-reviewed literature to support my observations. You might feel that I should take my observations back to the academic community, and leave the actual game-players to just play the game.

I would suggest that if your sentiment is just that the sites that are ancillary to the game are not an appropriate venue for such discussions, then you should learn to just skip over my posts, rather than trying to set yourself up as the ultimate arbiter of what I can and cannot discuss in the open forums. If your sentiment is that my analysis is inaccurate, than I would be more than happy to present supporting information.

I don't think it takes any specialized training, or academic knowledge, to have an interest and understanding of people forming interaction rules for themselves to follow; So, for you, maybe that isn't something that lends interest to playing MMOs, but for me it is the only thing that is truly interesting. Other than that, they're just about counting mouse/keyboard clicks.

EDIT: Incidentally, I'm still sticking with my observation that formalized language and sentence structures tend to put people off; however, the reason I think it works well is because it doesn't seem like passing a value judgment against the other player's self-worth. In my opinion, the idea is to not make people think I'm saying that they're not worthy to be a friend, but to make them think it wouldn't be fun to be my friend because I'd be boring all the time.