User:Kholzer17/new sandbox

Copied from Article

Flame war[edit]
A flame war results when multiple users engage in provocative responses to an original post—while the original post is sometimes flamebait, this is not always the case. Flame wars often draw in many users (including those trying to defuse the flame war) and can overshadow regular forum discussion if left unchecked.

Resolving a flame war can be difficult, as it is often hard to determine who is really responsible for the degradation of a reasonable discussion into flame war. Someone who posts a contrary opinion in a strongly focused discussion forum may be easily labeled a "baiter", "flamer", or "troll".

Flame wars can become intense and can include "death threats, ad hominem invective, and textual amplifiers" but to some sociologists flame wars can actually bring people together. What is bring said in a flame war should not be taken too seriously since the harsh words are a part of flaming.[25]

An approach to resolving a flame war or responding to flaming is to communicate openly with the offending users. Acknowledging mistakes, offering to help resolve the disagreement, making clear, reasoned arguments, and even self-deprecation have all been noted as worthwhile strategies to end such disputes. However, others prefer to simply ignore flaming, noting that, in many cases, if the flamebait receives no attention, it will quickly be forgotten as forum discussions carry on.[26] Unfortunately, this can motivate trolls to intensify their activities, creating additional distractions.

"Taking the bait" or "feeding the troll" refers to someone who responds to the original message regardless of whether they are aware the original message was intended to provoke a response. Often when someone takes the bait, others will point this out to them with the acronym "YHBT", which is short for "You have been trolled", or reply with "don't feed the trolls". Forum users will usually not give the troll acknowledgement; that just "feeds the troll".

In sociology, history, or any kind of online ethnographic academic study, flame wars as a corpus, in a STS approach of controversies, may be used to understand what is at stake in a community. The idea is that the flame war drives the actors into abandoning a polite stance and forces them to engage into debate and to unveil otherwise concealed arguments. In this respect, the most interesting parts of an online corpus are the flame wars as "outbursts of heated, short and dense debates, in an ocean of evenly distributed polite messages".[27]

=== How to avoid a Flame War === A flame troll is looking for a reaction from the reader to avoid the comments creating a flame war, here are 6 tips to avoid one:


 * 1) Be polite while writing your response
 * 2) Be calm and clear minded when responding.
 * 3) Provide data, facts and resources to explain your reason
 * 4) Stay unbiased within your response and factual
 * 5) Close the message clearly with limited misinterpretations.
 * 6) Thank them for writing to you and taking the time to do so
 * 7) If it doesn't stop, report the comments, emails and statements to the website organizer and disengage with that conversation