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Kafkaesquí’s Offensive Rules of Forum Use

I’ve been online for some years now, and part of those some years has been spent on Web discussion fora (plural of forum - latinesque!), and before Mosaic came to be known as more than just an art term, real terminal-based electronic bulletin boards. Ah, chatting at 1200 baud…

Needless to say (but being adept at the needless act I’ll say it), I have opinions on the point of forum posting. One big one is: most aiming to anger or peeve or tick off or annoy or generally look like an ass come across instead as fumbling incompetents. Way too many times I’ve seen a potentially explosive volly quickly diffused, the flamer lowered to blubbering apologies and offers of a round at the virtual pub. Not good!

So my goal here is simple: provide the flame posting newcomer with a few general rules of thumb that should assure his or her flame-threading on any board will get the participants banging their keyboards and the admins calling their ISP.

Learn to Spell

Those new to flaming typically miss this. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people laughed off boards due to the use of phrases like “fukk yuo al1″ or “lynucks sux”. If you want to get your offensiveness across, don’t give everyone an easy out like bad spelling. Considering the numerous spellchecking options computer users have available to them, there’s just no excuse for calling someone a “shhithed”.

Stick to Your Flame

Too many newbies allow (sometimes) wiser, more experienced residents of a board to turn the topic of a flame to their own cause(s). If you’re attempting to belittle a forum moderator’s taste in clothing, don’t get sidetracked in a war on whether t-shirts are acceptable in high fashion circles.

Keep Turning Up the Temp

The ultimate goal of a thread flame should be to end with all messages wiped from the BBS’ database and at least three participants banned for life from the site. If you’re going for the throat of your selected nemesis, why would you stop to trim your nails? You should always cut deep when strangling someone (electronically, that is).

Aim True to Aim Hot

This one should be easy, but apparently it’s not. Learn about and understand your target forum before going off on it. On a board discussing Intel PC hardware? Then don’t try to ratch things up by badmouthing Sun boxen. On a sports site? Leave behind “Bush sux” topics and the like. Such posting may get you tossed, but for being an idiot, not a flamer. There is a distinction.