[wccrawford]

It's also getting quite common so see just:

/flame

I can only imagine that's coming from the html-style metadata they are showing in these exactly, but made a lot easier to type for non-hackers. I rather like it myself, even.

[adambyrtek]

This might be related to the fact that some broken web applications blindly remove angle brackets instead of properly escaping them.

[vog]

To me, that plain "/flame" at the beginning of a line looks more like a pseudo-IRC. Note that IRC is still common among lots of hackers. Other IRC-related statements might be:

/me is angry|happy|whatever

/join ...

any maybe others. Those aren't used very often, though.

[wccrawford]

Actually, I see it at the end. Example:

I totally love what you did there.

/sarcasm

At the beginning, I'd definitely agree with you.

[pluies_public]

But then, you can't tell whether the sarcasm was intended from the very beginning of the message or merely the last sentence/paragraph.

[epochwolf]

I prefer this method in irc </sarcasm>