[Air-l] Reflections on flame wars.

[Eva Ekeblad]

At 21.47 +0100 02-01-13, Ken Friedman scrobe:
>1) A tip of the hat to Mickey Waxman
>
>Thanks for brining the Fantastic Four into the thread. Johnny Storm
>used to shout, "Flame On." His companions were Mr. Fantastic,
>Invisible Girl, and The Thing.

Yup. Loved that. Just the sort of culture the original inhabitants of
Netville were into. Could someone just complement this great info (for us
without an encyclopedic knowledge of the Shows) with WHEN, that would be
nice-and-kind.

>3) Flames today
>It may only be my sense of things, but I observe that flame wars are
>less common now than in the past.

I don't know - inspired by Danyel Fisher I did some quick searches at the
Google newsgroups archives (what a goldmine!) and flaming seems to be alive
and well in newsgroups (so my guess is that you, like me, don't frequent
them a lot).

>In contrast, heated scholarly debate continues, as it has done since
>the days of the first journals and learned publications.

Yes. That's an interesting genre of "flaming", if and when it is such. I
mean, there's a rule against ad hominem attacks in scholarly debate, but,
I'd say that since scholars have so much at stake in the ideas they marry
with their scholar's honor, there's plenty of scope for "personal" attack
by sophisticated means (like those suggested by Cristian).


At 11.08 -0600 02-01-13, Nancy Baym gave us a neat reference to Lea et. al:
>flaming is normative rather than medium-caused, and that flaming is probably
>no more common online than off but that people think it is because it is more
>_visible_ online than off (and they offer a number of compelling reasons this
>is so). I haven't seen a better piece on the topic than this one...

Hmm... I wonder if I can get hold of this.


>They argue a number of things, including that there is no good definition

Well, that is a wise thing to state in something to be published in a book
and put on a library shelf! On the other hand I think that for a discussion
like this it might be useful to have even a bad definition as a
coordinating reference point. And your "best so far" is not bad at all:

>name calling, swearing, insults, impolite statements, threats and put-downs,
>crude flirtations of a demeaning or sexually explicit nature, and attacks on
>groups or individuals

= flaming on the Net will be conflict carried out by linguistic means as
above, Net conflict carried out by more elegant use of language will be
something else, even if there is evidence of emotional involvement.

Wow! We're almost reaching a conclusion here!!


>I've always wanted to see a comparative analysis of flaming online vs. behind
>the wheel of a car. Talk about a medium that causes anonymity and hostility!
>I'll take computers over cars any day!

Well, I already did: I don't drive. But... don't blame the car, blame city
traffic. I'd dare say that inter-driver culture on the roads of Northern
Sweden is a lot friendlier than on the city streets of Stockholm.

Varma Hälsningar
Eva Ekeblad