---
title: "Asking Questions Without Getting Flamed"
description: This article I got from an old board blacksun.box.sk written by Raven. Very good and entertaining article. Might be useful for you guys who ask for help especially to underground forums, underground newsgroup, or IRC channel.
date: 2011-12-20T00:31:09+07:00
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categories:
  - TIL
tags:
  - IRC
  - Forum
  - Newsgroup
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authors:
  - ditatompel
---

This article I got from an old board `blacksun.box.sk` written by **Raven**. Very good and entertaining article. Might be useful for you guys who ask for help especially to *underground forums*, *underground newsgroup*, or **IRC channel**.

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## What are flames?
Flames are violent and aggressive responses to Email messages, newsgroup messages, IRC messages, or any other form of communication over the Internet or any other computer network. Flames usually consist of :

* **bad words**, E.g : *"Shut the f*ck up, ditatompel!"*
* **swearing**, E.g : *"ditatompel, you are a complete as\*hole!"*
* **cursing**, E.g : *"Go to hell, fu#ker!!"*
* **censorship-like marks**, E.g : *"You can take your tutorials and shove them up your !#&!! Why wouldn't you go and suck some @&!@$^!!!"*
* **threats of physical violence**, E.g : *"You are about to enter a world of pain, you son of a b!7ch!! I'm gonna kick your head until it falls off and starts bouncing and rolling down the stairs!!"*
* **capital letters**, E.g : *"FU%K OFF, YOU STUPID BI7CH!! GO GET A HUMAN FACE OR SOMETHING INSTEAD OF THE HIDEOUS-LOOKING ONE YOU HAVE!!"*

WHAT ARE F… Sorry, forgot to turn off the <kbd>caps lock</kbd> button. What are flame wars?

## Flame Wars
Flame wars occur when two or more different parties engage in a violent argument that, in a certain stage, turns into what is called a *"flame war"*. A flame war would continue until:
1. One of the parties would withdraw and admit that they were wrong, or
2. The flame war is *"killed"* by the *moderator* of the discussion mailing list, message board, IRC channel, etc, or
3. If one of the parties gets tired and stops responding to the other party's flames.

## When and why can/would I get flamed?
You can and probably will get flamed when you ask a number of questions or post a number of comments. I've sorted these into several groups and given examples for each group.

### 1. Begging
*"Please OP me!! PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!! P-L-E-A-S-E!! I'll do ANYTHING!!Can anyone please send me this file/URL/whatever? Please? PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE? Please please pretty please?"*

### 2. Asking people to do things for you
* *"Please hack this server/PC/website for me."*
* *"Please help me hack a friend's PC."*   
* *"Please help me find this and that"*

Unless you say that you've been searching this and that for a lot of time and give a short list of some of the places you've tried, in which case you probably won't get flamed, although most chances are that none would help you, unless it's a special help board like mine, in which case the moderators would probably help you.

### 3. General lameness
* *"I want to impress my friends and look elite. How do I hack?"*   
* *"Remote administration trojans are elite! Now how do I use Netbus?"*

### 4. Extreme lack of knowledge
* *"What is an ISP?"*   
* *"Do I have a sound card? How can I tell?"*   
* *"My printer stopped working. It says: 'out of ink'. Why is it 'out' of ink? Can't it just say it ran out of ink? And why did it ran out of ink anyway? I mean, it's a completely new cartridge! I only replaced it about 8 months ago!"*

### 5. Over-use of capital letters and exclamation marks
*"HEY, LISTEN UP GUYS!!!!!!!!! I DID THIS AND THAT AND I'M SOOOOOOOOOOO ELITE AND STUPID 'CAUSE I USE CAPITAL LETTERS AND TONS OF EXCLAMATION MARKS LIKE SOME SORT OF A FREAK OF NATURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! MOO, MOO, BAAAA, SQUEAK, MEAU, WOOF WOOF"*

and other such animal sounds..

### 6. Saying something that is against common belief or something that is of plain stupidity
* *"Hey, people, guess what? I think Windows is a stable operating system and that it kick's Unix's ass and I'm here to say it out loud like a total jerk!! I'm an idiot, hear me roar!!"*   
* *"What is Linux? It's an ISP just like AOL, right?"*

### 7. Starting a flame war
\* _This part has been censored for the sake of your mental health_ *

### 8. Asking inspecific questions
* *“Hey, how do I hack an FTP server?”*
* *“Please teach me EVERYTHING about TCP/IP – it's ins and outs, how it works, the history of TCP/IP and it's evolution over the years, detailed analysis of every protocol in the TCP/IP suite etc' etc'.”*

### 9. Praising yourself
* *“Hey, look at me!! I've just hacked my friend's PC and I'm sooooooo eleeeeeeet!!”*
* *“You guys are lamers! You know nothing!! I'm ten times better than you all!!”*

### 10. Not reading the topic message in IRC channel or the readme files, FAQs and help files in message boards and discussion mailing lists, thus asking silly questions and acting like a total jerk
* *“Hey, who are the moderators?”*
* *“How do I use this bot? How do I use this feature?”*

## How to avoid getting flamed?
1. DO NOT make any of the mistakes and flame-starting actions listed above.
2. Think twice before doing anything.
3. Make sure you know what you're talking about.

## What to do after you've been flamed?
In most cases, it's better to **leave the flamer alone** and **quiet-down** the issue. In some cases, you might have to reply, in which case you must find a way out. While you do so, try not to flame anyone back and make sure you don't give too many reasons for why you did this and that or said this and that, and only give REEEEAL GOOD reasons.

## Flaming-related concepts
* `/dev/null`   
if you don't know what this is, you probably never studied **Unix/ Unix Like** very thoroughly. Everything sent to `/dev/null` disappears from existence. This feature is very useful in many situations.   
For example: if you want to run and kill all the output and direct possible errors to `/usr/share/logs/log.txt`, you can type this: `command > /dev/null 2> /usr/share/logs/log.txt`.   
When someone tells you to direct your flames to `/dev/null`, he means that you'd better shut up.
* **STFU** – Shut The Fu*k Up.
* **FAQ** – Frequently Asked Questions. A file that contains… you've guessed it! Frequently Asked Questions.
* **RTFF** – Read The Fu*king FAQ / Read The Fine FAQ.
* **EOF** – End Of File (not so flaming-related. Skip two lines ahead to see why I added this entry).
* **justfuckinggoogleit.com** – Someone thinks you are an idiot because you were too stupid to check Google before asking a question. They gave you a link to this site as a joke. The fact that you followed it pretty much proves the point.