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A flame is, to me, anything that attacks an individual rather than an idea. It's very easy to do a good job of filtering out flames. The excellent mud-dev mailing list has virtually no flames, for instance, though admittedly, it requires the moderator to pre-approve all posts that go through, which is somewhat against the immediate nature of web forums.
A flame that makes a point isn't a flame in that part of the post. A flame that attacks an individual rather than an idea is just name-calling, regardless of whether it's clever or not.
And yeah, I, like most people, have a difficult time not responding to juvenile posts aimed at me. Character flaw, as the people making those posts should really rank beneath my attention.
Still, the problem with an ignore option is that even posters that make posts that are 95% full of garbage may occasionally come up with something useful to say, though I suppose if it's useful enough, someone will comment on it and one could read the useful bits that way.
--matt
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