Dear Eva: Thanks for wrapping up such a bunch of information and give give some orientation to the flame case! I am new to this digest and it is very difficult for me to keep the track of all the comments as some of them seem to be very chaotic(uups, could that be flaming someone?). Regarding to the flame topic, once reviewed some sources quoted by the other guys in the list, seems to me that FLAME=AGGRESSION WITHIN E-COMMUNICATION. That's it and no more. We do not refer here to a sistematic relation where agression is the link (some kind of sado-masoquist e-marriage), or organised verbal or graphic attacks to certain groups or people. There is where I find the lack of sense of the definition. If we are just talking about the episodes when you or I drop aggresive verbal intercourse, then the possible scenarios are ilimited and this will lead to nothing more than speculative conclusions and headaches again, I might be flaming someone that thinks, "this guy is really aggressive disqualifying the whole discussion..."). On the other hand, if we turn to look to AGGRESSION within the web, there are marvellous cases to study, i.e. recall the aggressions between chinesse and northamerican hackers? That was a news heading about one year ago. More about hackers, attacks and swearing used when invading web sites. Even more dramatic, extremist groups that use web sites to inflame agressive feelings or attack some communities (i.e. Islam extremists or colombian guerrilla web sites, even drug lords did have web sites). Now, regarding a comment you did when I headed my e-mail like "HURRAY EVA", should that be flaming to Sweedish community while to Latin americans and North americans might be just fine? Here we begin to enter the coplexities of verbal proximity in the web, within an environment. This digest is supposed to be an academic community so writing to you "Hi sweetie baby" might be flaming although you really might be sweet and a baby (uppps again...). Vital space reflects then also into verbal e-communication and transgressions to such verbal space are seen as flaming, although they might not be swearing. Have anyone participate (surelly you have but you you do not confess) into adult chats (adult always means sex...). The symbolic significance of such cyberspace gives new meaning to flame and I will be deligted to refer to all of you some weird situations lived there that can be clear examples of flaming comming to the limit of abuse! Just to begin I will tell you that my name is Cristian but I entered with the nick "Cris", which can be considered femenine or male but people tend more to think it is the name of a lady. In fact, when the nick "cris" showed, a bunch of chatters threw themselves to exert the most infamious amount of lassive and FLAMING commments. This leads me to conclude that flaming has also to do with the sex of the participants as, sexual reference offers wider possibilities of aggression. Well, if interested I will keep on with the story in the next issue. Saludos Cristian Berrio _________________________________________________________________ Descargue GRATUITAMENTE MSN Explorer en http://explorer.yupimsn.com/intl.asp.