In the book by Virginia Shea named Netiquette, one of her rules was to keep flame wars under control because they waste time and bandwidth. Although flaming is a long-standing tradition in the Internet, it wastes users patience and can get boring quickly. I think it is good to try to stop a flame war before it goes out of control.

Have you ever gone on a forum and in a certain topic there was a flame war going on? I have and let me tell you it is the most annoying thing that can go on the Internet.

Flame war is started when one word or one phrase can be intentionally made or interpreted incorrectly and this sets everybody in the forum off and everybody in the forum is yelling at other person. Making other reading experience miserable.

Flame Wars in action

As a person who loves to read about entertainment and certain celebrities, I know for a fact that you will not make fun of other people’s idol.  I have a certain idol Raymond Lam, and flame wars are popular with this idol in forums. I remember looking at one of the flame wars in the SPCNET forum.

One person who is indifference about the actor made a comment that could have been a casual thought of his acting or singing ability. Being in a forum where everybody is this idols fan, one person will interpret it incorrectly and words are passed. One person will say you are wrong and purposely put swear words. Putting in swear words will cause chaos. This is when the user will start using harsh words at each other, making fun of them, making fun of there level of English, yelling at each other. Fonts used will start to get bigger and bigger, reddish font colours will be used and mad fiery emoticons are put in to the mix.

As this point every post on the page is full of fighting. Any new reader coming in to this forum will be turned around because they do not want to get involved in a flame war. Other readers will be mad because it is harder for them to find the information that they are looking for, and it wastes time to scroll through a page of fighting.

Help Keep Flame Wars Under Control

Non fighting users in the forum will all try their best to calm each other down, trying to relax each party  and they may or may not get involved in the flame war themselves. If the fight is uncontrollable moderators come in to relax or ban users.

The best way as a user to stop flame wars is to post on the topic like there is no flame war going on by posting fact, news and positive comments like usual. Users who are involved in the flame war should start ignoring and stop writing negative comments, and as time passes the flame war will seize and the forum can go on as usual as there is no oil added to the fire.