I agree with JimmyT – I've never noticed him 'living in some sort of strata Utopia'. Instead I see a practical attitude that and – in this forum – a chance to share experiences so we can come up with solutions.
To me, strata living is as much about politics as the rest of life… I'm talking about politics with a small 'p', as in the interactions between people. In real life. We have real problems to solve – and just like in free standing houses, sometimes there are poor neighbourhood relations and unsympathetic landlords. And there are also strata managers and building managers who keep crap records – just like many other businesses, in my experience.
Back to the topic: I agree with struggler – if our EC didn't make decisions by email, then nothing much would happen. We also have meetings, where we usually endorse those email decisions.
I live in a unit complex which had become dysfunctional over many years. Our old (now sacked) strata manager was not the best with modern communication techniques, including email. In fact, they had minimal communication skills. Their record keeping and work performance sucked, despite their old fashioned office techniques.
It took for unit owners – some of whom contributed little before – to band together to make a change. We basically had a revolution. Our new situation is not perfect, but it is improving.
Our EC tries to foster a pleasant living environment and is not stacked with time servers or self-interested people. We communicate directly with residents, but mainly by regularly updating our noticeboards and NEVER posting up whinging notices. We remind people to contact the strata manager directly for their maintenance concerns and to contribute ideas via the secretary's letter box.
As secretary, I contact individual owners about resolving problems and email/mail unit owners our EC minutes (also displayed on noticeboards). If I ever saw bullying or defamatory emails going round, I'd intervene immediately – fortunately it's not happened to us.
Mind you, we did have a surprising experience after complaining to our old strata managers about the poor job they were doing: the company's owner sent stream of consciousness emails that made little sense, topping them off with his great PR effort of emailing crude images and pornography to a male EC member. If there were ever any doubts about the cost and difficulty of changing, his actions just made us accelerate the process of dismissal.