This is a blog post about blog post comments.  Not just comments on Linux Journal, but blog post comments in general, especially about blogs that support 'Anonymouse' contributions.

I've been a Linux geek for a long time.  We won't discuss how long, but Get Off Of My Lawn!

When I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory (for a long time, but again, we won't go into that) we had an internal mailing list named NMUG, for Network Manager's User Group.  Fully two thirds of the list members were Linux geeks, gurus, HPC whizes, kernel developers, admins, etc.  The others came from, you know, the Windows world.  We had some wonderful flame wars!  Just yesterday I received a message via Facebook from one of my ex-LANL colleagues who still works there saying, and I quote:

Today on NMUG it was lamented that it's impossible to have a proper flame war without you.

I've also run high-volume, high-visibility, highly contentious blogs in the past. See LANL, The Real Story as an example. 

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that I am quite familiar with the spittle-laden delivery style that some of our more passionate Linux Journal comment providers use when trying to make their point on whatever issue has them all worked up.  The authority on this style of internet information exchange, IMO, is Xkcd.

Now please don't misunderstand, I am not attempting to discourage this style of flaming delivery -- quite the opposite.  It is often most entertaining.  In fact, let me share with you one of my favorite "throw some gasoline on the fire" flaming techniques.  Reply to a flame by making a spelling or grammar correction in the offending comment. Works like a charm!

What prompted this thread, you might ask?  Well, I was reading Michael Read's recent  KDE4: It hurt, but did it work? article, and was tickled by the fervor of the anti/pro camps surrounding the great KDE vs. Gnome debate.  Did the anti-KDE flamers win over any converts to whatever was being claimed as a superior desktop environment?  I doubt it.  Did it make for entertaining reading?  I think so.

So, how about if we start a new discussion on the button placement in Ubuntu Lucid 10.04? No? How about the new default color scheme then?

Flame on!