Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!mcgill-vision!bloom-beacon!eru!luth!sunic!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Flames Message-ID: <1757@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 14 Feb 90 18:56:51 GMT References: <11279@attctc.Dallas.TX.US> <8PH13T7xds13@ficc.uu.net> <5659@blake.acs.washington.edu> <1740@skye.ed.ac.uk> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 19 In article morrison@ficc.uu.net (Brad Morrison) writes: >In article <1740@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes: >> Flame does not mean ad hominem, despite what some people say. >Perhaps Webster (whose dictionary has been misused here quite often of >late) doesn't define it that way, but I think the question here is one >of usage. I've never heard anyone say, "My article was flamed", or >"They roundly flamed my idea". Instead, we have "He flamed me", "I was >flamed", and "I may get flamed on this, but . . .". Half of that's because people feel that they have been attacked when their ideas have been, and the other half is that you haven't listened to enough people. You also have to look at cases where people claim to be flaming. Haven't you seen lots of articles where someone says "FLAME ON" and then proceeds with something that isn't ad hominem? I have. -- Jeff