developing an effective teacher persona

So now I am suddenly wondering if I have an effective teacher persona. I've been teaching strictly online for nearly six years now, and it occurs to me I have no idea how I come across.

When I was teaching conventional classes, I found that being easygoing meant no respect and a lot of late material to grade at the end of the semester, so I became meaner and more vindictive, which had the astonishing effect of making the students like me better.

You know, I have found that with online classes, accepting late work at all leads to an exponential jump in the amount of work involved, and doesn't serve any useful pedagogical goal, so I do not accept any late work at all.

What I make sure to do is send out lots of communication so there's no question what's expected and when it is expected.

Now, how that works with WAD is twofold: One, the assignment on Why Writing Sucks tricks the students into thinking I'm going to go easy on formatting and deadlines, and they are quite surprised to find out how dogmatic I am.

Next, all that opening-up of writer, reader, named and unnamed purpose tends to cause students to question what's going on with my communications, to the point of them reading stuff into my advice and instructions that's quite bizarre.

Which I guess is a good thing.