I'm not sure I understand the difference between a personal insult and a flame. I also don't know what the difference between trolling and flame-baiting is.
I'll link you to working definitions of them, but some folks tend to learn better through the digestion of examples so I'll provide them as well.
Flaming and
flamebaiting.
Flaming can be in the form of personal attacks and insults, but it can also be in the form of vitriolic inflammatory attack of a person's position or implied position.
Example of Flaming:
Poster 2 said:
Poster 1 said:
Pro-lifers are the fucking scourge of the earth, they are dimwitted pieces of shit who only managed to live long enough to walk this earth by the virtue of their parent's falsely endorsing a pro-life themselves, every pro-lifer is a poster child for why post third-trimester abortions ought to be legal.
^ Poster 1 just got flamed by Poster 2, but Poster 2 was careful to craft their post as not being a personal attack because they avoid stating Poster 1 was any of the things they denigrate, instead Poster 2 artfully attacked "pro lifers" as a proxy for Poster 1.
This is one form of flaming.
Example of Flamebaiting:
Poster 2 said:
Poster 1 said:
I am pro-life and I think anyone who is pro-choice ought to forfeit their own right-to-life and allow the state to decide if they should be terminated post-third trimester at its discretion, pro-choicers being the murdering scum that they are, capital punishment for being an accomplice to murder is a fitting sentence.
Pro-lifers are the fucking scourge of the earth, they are dimwitted pieces of shit who only managed to live long enough to walk this earth by the virtue of their parent's falsely endorsing a pro-life themselves, every pro-lifer is a poster child for why post third-trimester abortions ought to be legal.
^ Poster 1 provoked (baited) Poster 2 into flaming them by artfully attacking "pro choice" as a proxy for attacking Poster 2.
This is one form of flamebaiting.
Two wrongs don't make a right, flamebaiting and flaming are ordinarily treated as equal violations of the forum posting guidelines here at ATF. However, within P&N we have not made it a priority to enforce the no-flaming/no-flamebaiting rule.
The argument against allowing flaming/flamebaiting is that it is unproductive, neither party benefits from the exchange, and the larger audience in general finds little substance was contributed to the thread or discussion itself as well.
The argument for allowing flaming/flamebaiting is that it feels good for the flamer and flamebaiter, basically the same emotional pleasure-centers are triggered that trolls and bullies are looking to trigger within themselves when they troll and bully people online. It is more about personal pleasure and self-satisfaction than it is about education, discussion, and community.
Social psychologists have known for decades that, if we reduce our sense of our own identity ? a process called
deindividuation ? we are less likely to stick to social norms. For example, in the 1960s
Leon Mann studied a nasty phenomenon called "suicide baiting" ? when someone threatening to jump from a high building is
encouraged to do so by bystanders. Mann found that people were more likely to do this if they were part of a large crowd, if the jumper was above the 7th floor, and if it was dark. These are all factors that allowed the observers to lose their own individuality.
Source
Most importantly, the paper will show that flaming and associated behaviours are not always driven by malicious intent, but inexperience, frustration, the psychological desire to experience thrill, ease tension and assert dominance (Alonzo & Aiken, 2004) as well as conflict with online community norms (Aakhus & Rumsey, 2010).
Source
The question for the community* is - what kind of community does P&N want to be? Does it currently meet that objective? If it doesn't, what can be done to set in motion the process for getting there?
This thread is intended to generate that discussion within the community. It is not entirely clear to the mods what kind of community the P&N subforum wants to be.
* there is also the question which the mods must answer - what kind of community does Anand want P&N to be, and what kind of community does he not want his name associated with? We are to balance those two objectives when they do not overlap, and naturally defer to enforcing the site's owner's wishes first. For example, Anand most assuredly does not want racism in his forums, regardless whether or not the community wishes itself to be an enclave of racists.
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