So today's entry was thoroughly random; the forum topic might as well, too.

What was the best flame war you ever witnessed or participated in? What was the worst? The most insufferable? The longest running? The most pointless? The one that most made you want to spank the participants? The funniest? The saddest? The one from which you could not tear your eyes?

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

Answers

I don't have a direct answer to your question, Beth.

But I do think if one is not directly involved in a flame war, watching the battle can be quite entertaining and/or instructive. Someone ought to start some sort of weblog devoted to pointing out flame wars so we can all crowd 'round and watch the carnage.

Heck, I don't rubberneck on the roads; the least I can do is rubberneck online...

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

I've been almost involved in one over the last couple of days that has been insufferable, pointless and completely weird. But I can't risk encouraging the lunatic concerned by discussing it further.

I had some dozies when I was first using the internet, before I realised it was fairly stupid to get riled up about what some complete stranger had to say about me. So now I try very hard to ignore the weirdos, and they eventually get bored and wander off elsewhere.

(But I must admit I will follow a good flame war from the sidelines, because ... and I suspect most other forum users or journal writers are similar.)

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

I don't do flame wars -- too much like what I do for a living. If there's fun in them at the beginning, it quickly dries up as the participants' mutual degrading orbits drain them of wit and they approach the event horizon of endless reptitions of "I know you are but what am I?"

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

The Well has entertaining flame wars, because most of the participants are pretty intelligent and highly verbal. Most of them are not about the usual gun control and abortion subjects. Of course, like all flame wars, they become tedious, especially when it's the nth iteration of whatever.

A long-running one started when someone posted a comment on Clifford Stoll's book "The Cuckoo's Egg" that it was really interesting and well written, so he couldn't possibly have written it himself because he's a computer scientist, not a writer. Cliff was a member of the Well at the time.

Observers there have a tradition of posting things like "(setting up lawn chair, opening beer)" as a way of saying "A bunch of us are here watching you make an idiot of yourself, in case you're interested."

People also joke that every July or so there will be a major flame war of some kind, just because things are slow then. It seems to be true.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

Okay, at the risk of stepping into the crossfire, let me say that I get unimpressed by flame wars. It's not just that they don't interest me, but that they sort of . . . what's the word exactly? Disenchant?

As a litigator, I spend all day disagreeing with people. I have ten or fifteen attorneys at any given time whose goal in life is to thwart me and my client, and to talk trash about our positions to the court. That's my life. My job is to stay on civil terms with these people, not to burn bridges with them (so that things are cool when we wind up on the next case working as co-counsel). Good lawyers can keep the argument separate from the person.

My experience has taught me that an attorney who cannot keep the disagreement from becoming personal is at a disadvantage -- not only in terms of closing the door on an amicable settlement or foreclosing him- or herself from acting as my co-counsel. He or she is also at risk of losing perspective in the case and therefore losing credibility before the court. "Losing credibility" is attorney talk for looking like an immature idiot.

Can that credibility loss be limited only to courts? I doubt it. When two people get into an uncontrolled flame war and start trading nasty epithets or spamming each other, they certainly lose credibility with me. Because I have no other frame of reference to form an impression of them except what they post on the Web, it's a serious loss.

I guess it doesn't matter, because who the Hell am I, anyway? But because a lot of the online folk I know work in IT, I have to wonder if they are doing their careers any good. I mean, if future employers know about the flame wars, petty behavior, etc., can that do anything but harm the participants? I dunno. Here's what I do know: I wouldn't walk down the street drunk and disorderly if I knew there was a convention of Federal judges in town.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

Tom makes a very good point about professionalism.

I work for a website as its senior editor. I work with a lot of other reporters and editors. I've seen people get canned for abusing their position in the middle of flame wars. Frankly, the prospect of something I wrote in the heat of the moment coming back to haunt me later is precisely what keeps me under control, barring the occasional snippy comment.

Of course that doesn't stop me from setting up a lawnchair and opening a beer (I love that term! Thanks Lizzie!). Perhaps it's a vestige of my graduate school days studying computer-mediated communication; maybe it's my natural tendency to eavesdrop translated into a new medium.

Regardless of reason, I must admit: I'm not disenchanted by flame wars. But I do heed Tom's message about professional aptitude.

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2000

That one I participated in on the Rules boards was pretty freaking hilarious.

The most frustrating ones are the ones that get deleted before I see them.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

I think they're all pretty sad. Nothing more embarrassing than a group of apparent adults regressing all the way back to the reptilian brain and carrying on like five-year-olds in the playground (and having participated in a few, I don't exclude myself from that description). If the comments are witty then the fire fighting can be tolerable, but, as was noted, the humour tends to disappear in a hurry, and then the flame war just becomes tedious.

What I don't like is the lingering ill-feeling they can potentially generate. Case in point: a battle I got into on a mailing list I'm on, set up for other members of my year at high school (class of '92, Sydney Boys High). Things go quite pleasantly, we have occasional meetings, but at some point late last year trouble erupted when one member, we'll call him CS, started using the list to fire unprovoked broadsides at us. Just came out of nowhere. I remembered CS being a bit of a shit at school and thought that time hadn't mellowed him much. Net result was that we all ganged up on him and fought him off mercifully it was shortlived, and at the end we found that it actually wasn't CS at all. It was some other prick who knew us all and who was posing as CS. The real CS didn't even know the group existed until after it was all over, apparently. But if this revelation hadn't been made, I'd have consigned CS to my hate list forever, on account of nothing he'd done. Fear of lasting bad feelings is what stops me getting involved in these things whenever I can avoid them

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

Hey Beth, I noticed you were one of the people that participated in the Dave Van bashing over on Rob's forum. Have you seen this?

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

GROUP HUG!

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

(from that link)

was man enough to write in to The TAR and own up to it

OK ... guesses as to who's behind this TAR site? (Give us an M!)

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

Jesus H. Christ, that website is downright scary. I know Americans are high on freedom of speech and all, but at what point does the line get crossed (or obliterated, as in this case?) What possesses someone to put so much energy into a negative, hateful endeavour?

Just an ever so slightly mild case of compulsive obsessiveness there. Yowch.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

I don't think it's Mike. I think it's Dave trying to sound like Mike. I think the person who posted on the board was Mike, but this web site sounds like Dave Van to me.

Of course, if Rob has deleted the messages he can't check the IP addresses, and Dave may know that. But the messages on the board sound more like Mike than Dave to me.

And by the way, Sarah, you make it sound like I jumped onto some vicious Dave Van dog pile, and I don't think that was the case. I didn't see the messages so I accepted Rob's statement that it was Dave who had done the spamming. What I wrote was this:

I think it's really unfortunate that Dave is allowed to have this much power in the journaling scene. I don't blame Rob -- lord knows I've done my share of deleting Dave spam -- but it just sucks when Dave wins like this. It really does.

If one of my friends had hassled Rob until he took down the forum, I would think that sucked, too. I don't think one person ought to be able to wield that much power. Frankly, I wish Rob had held strong and just deleted for one night and kept the forum. Whoever it was -- Mike, Dave, anyone else -- he's feeling mighty proud of himself right now for destroying something that was fun for other people, and that sucks.

And I don't think that sentiment constitutes "bashing."

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

A few items, and then I'd like to be done with this. I deleted my forum for the express purpose of being done with this.

1) TAR is Dave. There are a few pieces of email posted on that site that were from me to Dave, many months ago. So I think we can assume that either Dave is writing it, or someone is stealing Dave's email. Perhaps Dave can be like OJ and go looking for the Real Poster.

2) Mike has fessed up to the forum shenanigans. He's quite proud of himself, actually, and seemed hurt that Dave Van was being credited.

3) Beth didn't jump on any "bashing" bandwagon. She expressed an opinion about Dave's behavior that was true regardless of whether or not he was responsible for this latest disaster.

Anyway. There it is. My forum is dead, I hope this whole stupid thing can die with it. I made some big mistakes this week, and I've done my best to make things right. And that's about all I can do.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

I just wanted to add my condolences regarding the demise of Rob's forum. I think it's a shame that it had to come to this, my only consolation is that Beth is still hanging in there despite what I'm sure are the best efforts of people such as Dave Van and Mike Leung. The sad thing is that when something like this happens these silly nasty people seem to benefit. They get hits from people who wouldn't normally frequent their sites, and I'm sure this gives them great satisfaction.

I would say that this whole debacle is an excellent example of the worst type of flame war.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

Ignoring Dave really does work. It's difficult, but worthwhile. Most people on diary-l have finally realized this.

Like every other sad little troll, he only does it for the attention, and when there is none, shuffles off to find new activities.

-- Anonymous, July 07, 2000

Well, having seen the T.A.R. site, I'd now like to second Ron Collings's comments and nominate this one-man fire fight as possibly the most appalling thing I've ever seen on the Net. What a noxious little cunt Dave Van must be (apologies for choice of word, if anyone here is offended by strong language, but it really was the kindest thing I could say about him). I'm struggling to work out what would motivate someone to go to that length

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2000

James, I just reviewed the T.A.R. site and I do not see how the things Dave has said are any worse than the things Rob has said. In fact, it seems that for the most part he has simply turned the things Rob has said back on Rob.

-- Anonymous, July 08, 2000

At first I thought that "noxious little cunt" was pretty kind, because who could object to being compared to female genitalia? But then I realized that James must have been stressing the "noxious", meaning that Dave Van couldn't realize his full potential because of poor hygiene.

Good one, James!

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

Sarah said: "James, I just reviewed the T.A.R. site and I do not see how the things Dave has said are any worse than the things Rob has said. In fact, it seems that for the most part he has simply turned the things Rob has said back on Rob."

Well that's maybe true. I don't have much experience of what either Dave or Rob have said about anything beyond the things they've said at various points in Beth's forum. So I wouldn't know if either of them was saying worse things than the other. I'm still somewhat stunned, though, to think that Dave would feel the need to go to the length that he did. Not saying that it's better or worse than anything Mr Rummel-Hudson may have done, but I still find it kind of horrific

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

You know, as soon as Rob takes it upon himself to dedicate an entire website to Dave's shortcomings, I'll side with you.

You guys do know how indredibly unlikely that is, don't you?

At any rate, I think we need to recruit a portly diva to come sing a few bars so we can call all this drama dead.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

I have an even better idea, Jackie -- we'll make a new rule, similar to the "Hitler" rule. As soon as Dave Van posts to the forum using a fake name, the thread is dead. See ya, "Sarah."

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

I was going to ask about that...

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

I am not Dave Van, Beth, and I don't know where you got that idea. Are you pulling a Rob?

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

Yes, how silly of you, Beth!

After all, Dave Van is a man, and Sarah is a woman, so they're obviously not the same person! The fact that Sarah uses Dave's narrow vocabulary and phrasing style, the fact that she is apparently the only person in the diary community who respects him enough to defend him, and the fact that she is using a hotmail address and no last name are obviously just coincidences.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

Sarah is Dave, Sarah is not Dave, whatever.

As a total outsider to flame wars on the net, I have to say this.....there is a big difference between argumentative flamer, and sick scary stalker.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

Well spotted Jen. mis000 must be Dave Van too!

As you people are so aptly proving, saying something showing any sympathy at all for Dave Van is political suicide. That explains the hotmail, okay?

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

As you people are so aptly proving, saying something showing any sympathy at all for Dave Van is political suicide

It would be, if anyone gave a fuck about you, Dave.

Pathetic doesn't even begin to describe this sort of behavior.

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

My feelings about flame wars and euphemisms are put forth in my diary of this date. http://bastion.diaryland.com/185.html

-- Anonymous, July 09, 2000

Call me crazy, but when someone posts with an IP address from British Columbia, spells her own e-mail address incorrectly, and sounds exactly like Dave Van, I sometimes leap to strange conclusions.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

Perhaps discussing flame wars wasn't the best idea...

Oy.

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000

I'm fix'n to start one, my writing has been STOLEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On the fourth of July I wrote this sentence in the "Solve the Health Care" thread: "I'll never understand the liberal "brain". "

I did forget my trademark on the phrase "liberal "brain"[TM]", but I clearly own this phrase.

Imagine how shocked, SHOCKED, I am to see that yesterday the writer and Saloon Columnist David Horowitz lifted MY trademarked term for his own nefarious purposes without a word of acknowledgement.

While the Horowitz essay makes irrefutable points, the fact remains he stole my trademarked term. I can only attribute this theft to a flashback to his former life as a Communist.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2000

Cute...

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2000

Not at all the same: you implied the liberal 'brain' is something other than a brain, while he implied the brain(s) in question was something other than 'liberal.' It's all in the quotation marks...

I don't think you have a case, Jim.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2000