[kmfrk]

It's not. :)

Smilies are great for disambiguation, as people have some innate tendency to assume the most negative interpretation of a comment online; look at the culture of manufactured outrage in the U.S. over absurd interpretation of what people say in the public space. Of course, smilies like ":D" and such are rarely useful, and I prefer communicating in text to smilies when possible. (My Twitter feed barely has any smilies.)

I can see why you would usually turn them off, because they are often misused and superfluous, but text-based smilies usually serves the purpose perfectly well.

Go to a community like Quarter to Three[1] and behold the surliest community that has ever been suffered onto mankind. Emoticons do wonders in forum-based (BB-based) communities to lighten the mood.

Text is very poor for conveying tone, as your response and the ensuing conversation conveniently illustrate. Even if text weren't poor at the job, people would lack the time and skill to wield it convincingly.

Don't get me wrong, I hate smilies for the most part. I still see their purpose, when relevant, though.

[1]: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/index.php

[sopooneo]

If people use them, they are useful, but my feeling on smileys has always been negative. The vast bulk of the time they are used to disambiguate a joke or sarcasm. But telling people you are joking kills the humor anyway, so just write plainly.

[batista]

Emoticons/smilies and such do emerged for the very reason you say, disambiguation of things that could be taken out of context in mail form.

Note that this disambiguation does not necessarily mean "making less ambiguous".

A smiley could also mean "make what I say more ambiguous, because I mean it in an ambiguous way (e.g half joking)".

So, it's only disambiguation in a meta-level: making what should be ambiguous more ambiguous, and what should be taken literally more literal.

>Smilies are great for disambiguation, as people have some innate tendency to assume the most negative interpretation of a comment online; look at the culture of manufactured outrage in the U.S. over absurd interpretation of what people say in the public space.

I think "manufactured" is the key word here (that and hypocrisy).

People used to be more vigilant about that kind of hypocrisy, but only if it's by people on the right (i.e a strict republican "man of god" that's caught red-handed with a prostitute, not on the "left", e.g a blog post in the lines of "Booth babes at a tech expo, that is so sexist" by someone who's idea of fun is Hooters).