Flaming

Description
Flaming is a phenomenon when a person have a hostile attitude towards others and shows this by engaging them in hostile conversations.

Examples
One user posts an artical on Wikipedia that in a political view could be seen as not being politically correct. Another user then starts an aggresive counter conversation as she feels ofended or in any other way feel that the original post was inapropriate.

Pros and Cons
In some cases this could lead to a simple kind of self moderation in a forum. But for the most part it will just go beserk and the only ones that are left will be the shamers. So if this isn't something that you strive for on a forum or social site make sure to implement measures to prevent it.

Relations
This pattern is created by users being able to be anonymous or pseudo-anonymous. When there is no consequence of a users actions and the systems is without moderators.

Acording to Curmlish & Malone this can also be called flamewars a close relative to this subject is the social pattern called vendetta which is in principle the same. The difference is that instead of one person beeing responsible entire groups (of different opinoions) start to shame eachother. Edit Wars can lead to Flaming when peoples views cross each other.

Contributors
Created by Magnus Spånggård.