The recent flame war on the F&SF message board got me thinking about how to refer to a specific flame war. I decided that it would be best (or at least most amusing) to refer to them as if they were court cases, which is fun, and also convenient if one wanted to cite something from the text when participating in a new flame war, as if citing case law.

For example, this recent flame war would be:

Bromfield v. F&SF, (2005)

So rather than retread the same topics over and over, flame warriors could develop a sort of shorthand to argue their cases: “Ah, but see, that’s where you’re wrong. In post 73633 of Bromfield v. F&SF, Nick Mamatas said…”