Destructive conflicts are dangerous as they undermine both formal and informal relationships between users, adding psychological unease to communication and potentially driving users away from the community. Destructive conflicts have never helped resolve any underlying issues.
Mishandling conflicts may lead individuals to stop sharing thoughts and ideas due to a fear of criticism. In this case the quality and creativity of decisions decrease dramatically. Destructive conflicts may also contribute to an increase of abusive and violent behavior in the community.
Destructive conflicts are also referred to as “relational conflicts”. Relational conflicts are situations when users feel offended, angry and blame each other for the presence of a problem.
When users use negative language to describe a conflict, they often refer to a destructive conflict. In this case, users either try to avoid the conflict or, when avoidance is not an option, they respond aggressively, so called “fight-or-flight” mode.
This is a fragment of a draft of the book “Lessons Learned While Working On Stack Overflow”. Read the full book on kindle or the paperback version.