I agree with the above commenters who say that f_w sometimes inflames existing wank into a much bigger deal that it might have been had it gone unnoticed by fandom-at-large.

But, more worringly, I've noticed a recent trend in which the threat of f_w prevents fannish behavior, period. Several friends of mine have decided not to post things, or posted until heavily-filtered lock, in case of seeming "wanky," when they were genuinely upset or excited about something. Frankly, I'm getting pretty sick of the idea that anything a certain crowd deems self-involved or otherwise mockworthy is "wanky," and the fact that what might have been an interesting discussion to the participants can be stopped cold once the dreaded "wank" label is applied. I can think of several recent large discussions that were not, in my opinion, wanky (ie, flamewar-like) but they ended up on f_w, and yes, the talk pretty much died down. What's up with this arbiting of what is and is not a good discussion by people who only want to point and laugh, and not actually get involved themselves?