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I read an online discussion not long ago in which linguists from non-English speaking countries were trying to verify information about their teaching of English modal auxiliary verbs.  A number of English speaking linguists responded to help with both methods and discussion of some details. Several respondents thought they needed to discuss at length modal auxiliary use in English.  As you can imagine, it was a tedious and laborious exchange of writings.

This online discussion represented a lack of awareness of what was being asked.  Some of the contributors merely wanted to show their prowess in using a field's jargon, presumably to show that they had mastered their subject.  They didn't stop at the end of their answer to the question, but continued to pontificate as if people wanted to hear their wisdom in a plethora of examples as if fellow linguists might not understand their own jargon.

Linguists of all people should be aware of what a question entails.  In fact, entailment is part of the linguistic jargon.  The discussion very clearly showed the need for some people to feed their egos in some way by writing twice the amount of information it takes to answer the question asked.  I can usually tell just by looking at the Q&A format when someone wants to talk.  I see a short question (as opposed to a longer, more complex question) and a lengthy answer.  I used to hear the saying, "He just likes to hear himself talk."  It applies to writing as well.

As I reviewed the answers, these profs were so eager to show off their knowledge that they left out two of the most common uses.  Six of the answers basically repeated the information being given, but no one touched on two common, though not frequent, uses of the modal auxiliaries.  There were also no definitions of terms being used in order to be able to tell if the reason that the two common uses were not fitting the definition of "modal" in some way, or if there was merely an oversight on the part of these scholars.

The discussion lacked enrichment and organization.  I hope it doesn't represent the caliber of scholars coming up who substituted haste in answering for competence in deliberation.  I'm not sure ego problems can be fixed, but a healthy dose of competence in a situation usually smokes out the incompetence.  I'm sure that occasion will arise for those so eager to respond in this forum.