From: John Cowan (cowan@mercury.ccil.org)
Date: Thu May 08 2003 - 08:16:00 EDT
William Overington scripsit:
> >That said I'm ceratinly keen to avert a flame war,
>
> That is three people in two different threads who have mentioned the phrase
> "flame war" recently. What exactly is a flame war?
From the Jargon File (http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon):
flame war n. [common] (var. `flamewar') An acrimonious dispute,
especially when conducted on a public electronic forum such as Usenet.
flame [MIT, orig. from the phrase `flaming asshole'] 1. vi. To post an
email message intended to insult and provoke. 2. vi. To speak incessantly
and/or rabidly on some relatively uninteresting subject or with a
patently ridiculous attitude. 3. vt. Either of senses 1 or 2, directed
with hostility at a particular person or people. 4. n. An instance of
flaming. When a discussion degenerates into useless controversy, one
might tell the participants "Now you're just flaming" or "Stop all that
flamage!" to try to get them to cool down (so to speak).
-- John Cowan http://www.ccil.org/~cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com Please leave your values Check your assumptions. In fact, at the front desk. check your assumptions at the door. --sign in Paris hotel --Cordelia Vorkosigan
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