During the months of January and February, 1997, a flame war occured in the newsgroup ALT.GOOD.MORNING (AGM). It started when a new poster, who I'll call Mark, crossposted to a group of newsgroups, including one named alt.nuke.the.USA. As a result of these crossposts, a group of people who received these posts, decided to target AGM. They began posting to AGM and crossposting their messages. The content of their posts were verbally abusive. They responded to AGM posts with flames and hate mail. Their posts were totally different from the usuall AGM style, and were quite spiteful.

Following these posts, AGM began dealing with the issue of flames. Flaming is quite usuall and acceptable in other newsgroups, but not in AGM. One of the only rules of AGM is a no-flaming rule. This is quite strictly observed in order to keep the friendly atmosphere of AGM. Another rule is that when flaming occurs, the best strategy is to ignore it, and it will go away. In the past this has been quite successful in discouraging flaming.

The latest flame war involved more than one flamer, and the flamers seemed quite tenacious. They seemed to view the flaming of AGM as a challenge, one they wished to persue. They claimed that Mark having crossposted to their newsgroup, gave them the right to flame AGM, a right they were planning on fulfilling.

AGM had to deal with this invasion, which threatened to rock the existence of the newsgroup. There were a few levels of dealing with the flames. The first level is the actual flame posts. A discussion arose as to whether to reply to them, what to say, who should say it, etc. Another level was the newbie, Mark, who started the flame war. AGMers were wary of him, and weren't sure if he was indeed a naive newbie, or a deliberate trouble maker. Besides these issues, the atmosphere of AGM was threatened by the flame war, and AGM had to work to heal itself following this attack.

The flame war, and the occurances surrounding it, give an opportunity to view ALT.GOOD.MORNING and see how the community of AGMers create the unique feeling of AGM.