How To Avoid Flaming in a Thread - REVISITED

“HOW-2-AVOID-FLAMES-IN-A-THREAD”.

I hope the subject falls in here, otherwise, please move to a much better place... Thanks a bunch!

What is flaming? It is a word that means blazing, burning, glowing, fiery, red, fierce, blazing, furious and a lot more. In forums and chats, it is a war (in exchange of words) going on. A simple S2PID post could start a war of word, exchanging non-essential words, leading to non-ethical way of communication. It is not a BAD IDEA defending your opinion, but if it gets worst (the situation), then it is time to STOP IT (like the moderators do).

Lately, I am disturbed by flaming in few of the threads made by newbies like me, in-fact, I was involved in some of the flaming thing (arrrgggg, can’t avoid it).

Can’t avoid it? Really? Yes we can try if we do some orientation thing (again).

Re-orientation about posting a thread

To start of, I have an additional suggestion for AO mods and admins, after a new member signs up, can he/she receive an e-mail about some of the most stickiest sticky(s) in AO for newbies? Since I firmly believe that upon doing this add-on “WELCOME SCHEME”, they could be encouraged to RTFM or at least be reminded of what ‘first comes first’ before posting. IMHO, SPECIFIC FAQ should always show very readable/visible for the starting page of newbies and prospect members. Until certain time that they’ll get used to it and be a better thread starter or poster after reading some FAQ about it. – Should be on the SUGGESTION SECTION.

Going to re-orientation, I had setup few of the most common guidelines needed to be given emphasis to really avoid flaming amongst us AO members here:

1. Firstly, DO A SEARCH!
a. Search from http://www.Google.com about the issues you want or plan to post here, if not much answer had been given…
b. Search AGAIN from http://www.Google.com, re-phrase it… 2 times is better than one.
c. Search from AO SEARCH (THAT FORUM SEARCH ON THE UPPER RIGHT CORNER OF THE AO MAIN PAGE)
d. Once searching for the issues you are looking for may have taken you to the answer already, it could save time, words, and space. And even avoids redundancy (I HOPE THIS THREAD I STARTED DO NOT COUNT TO REDUNDANCY).
e. If after searching for all the possible keyword for the issues you are looking, then you can start from procedure 2.

2. Threads should follow the standards (what? You will say… wait…), simple standards of a thread which had been mentioned way back, but still being ignored by members especially newbies. Most of the flames that I had seen as a response to the post falls in the following:
a. Post that implies bad/suspicious goal – TRUE or NOT TRUE SITUATION, you could do better than piss off the AO community with starting a post/thread like “how can I do things illegally while implying that I will do it legally…”, sooner or later this idea will start fire as soon as the guys get suspicious, too many times posters get interrogated and found guilty of not telling the truth at the first place, ONE PIECE OF ADVICE, BE HONEST… But avoid S2PID posts.
b. Bad way of posting (technically) (m!$$p3Lled, too much grammatical errors, both by laziness, deliberately or not)
i. – For spelling and/or grammar, like one AO senior had mentioned before, it only takes you a matter of seconds to at least spell-check your post or use a word processing program (like M$ word) to do wonders for you.
c. Details – any specific problem or issue or idea has details. Try to think of it like “IF YOU NEED QUICK AND EFFECTIVE REPLY, make your inquiries more like a detailed (but straight-to-the-point) kind of an inquiry and with sense.
3. Post reply is very important in the continuity of an on-going thread (specially issues pertaining to SECURITY), so your post could drive the thread into a worth-to-read-and-to-learn thread instead of a thread full of flaming and un-answered issues. Please, avoid being suicidal!
4. Ahhhh, DON’T REPLY TO VERY VERY OLD THREADS unless you have a really really BIG ISSUE about it that could qualify to be enough reason to be AWAKEN again. Even some S2PID OLD MEMBERS (quoted by others) knows this and avoids this kind of annoyance. Somebody will disagree again with this issue, but I would like to clarify again, DON’T REPLY UNLESS YOU HAVE SOME DEVELOPMENT ABOUT IT THAT WOULD OR COULD INTEREST THE COMMUNITY.

I know most of the above-mentioned ideas had been covered or mentioned already, but for refreshing purpose and as an eye-opener (again), I hope this thread could not start flaming, hence could receive a positive response from you guys out there (both new and seniors). Please add important points that I missed (really I am paranoid sometimes).

LASTLY, please again, kindly take a little (much) time to read the FAQ, and STICKY(S), it could improve the way threads and posts could be treated and/or answered.

Now, /me comes back to reading security-related threads… Have a nice day!

Cheers!

Yo!