Yoo says he thinks that newsgroups are "very impersonal and people tend to be a lot ruder than they'd be in person." He was not involved in most of the flame war, but says he thinks it's pretty funny, calling it "playful tit-for-tat."

Some discussion groups have also provided a forum for course criticism--albeit anonymous in nature.

A student calling himself Bromobenzene Boy posted on the Chemistry 5 discussion group on Nov. 1 what he called "a manifesto" criticizing problem sets and the "superficial" nature of the class.

A few students agreed with him, but most did not.

"Little Boy--please grow up," wrote one student.

"Enroll in Chem 10. Maybe then you'll be happy," wrote another.

One student wrote he or she was particularly bothered by the non-academic dialogue on the page.

"I use this page as a way to get help, and all I get is this page that is polluted with your garbage," the student wrote.

Davis says he was not really bothered by the student's attacks, although he says he would like to discuss Bromobenzene's concerns with him.

"Half a dozen people devoted a lot of time to those things, time which would have been better spent on the problem sets," Davis says of the exchange.

If students continue to hold general discussion in the group that others find especially distracting, Davis says he may create a second discussion group just for non-course-related topics.

Bergen says the ICG will not douse the flames of a group discussion unless requested to do so by an instructor.

"It is our policy that, just as we would never advise an instructor what to allow to be said in the classroom, we will not moderate the HyperNews lists," he says.

He says the ICG can trace anonymous posts to some extent using access logs, but that it would never do so without a faculty member's request.

Most professors say they are not concerned about discussion digression.