<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Dovster:
If the recipient does not reject it, but it meets all the other requirements, is it still a flame?
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An attempt
to flame, I would say. Both insult and provocation are required for that gambit to "materialize." In any event, this is not Usenet, and the jargon term is perhaps better eschewed entirely.
Then again, I'm geezer enough that I still consider "newbie" to be a barbarous neologism.