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I'm not a fan of flash-fiction, but then I'm not really a big fan of short stories either - but some can be quite wonderful. Here's my theory...
I think that most authors write best at a certain length, some shorter, others longer. Sometimes an author can still do well out of their comfort zone, but it's harder work and the result is less likely to be ideal. I also think that most stories have a sort of natural length, the length the story wants to be. When a story meets a compatible writer then a natural synergy occurs and the result can be great. If the two mismatch it can be a struggle even to be good*. And, of course, readers fit into this too, some finding certain lengths more comfortable.
You put all this together and you get a reader like me that can be content with a novel that is just "okay", but a short story has to be very good for me to think it is worth the effort, and flash fiction has to be extraordinary. Since extraordinary is rare at any length, I tend not to bother with flash fiction.
All of which goes some way to explaining why I think the acronym should be MICEZ. For me, flash fiction must have Zing! There must be something sharp and/or lively and/or fascinating and/or extraordinary in the story and/or in the phrasing. Don't just write me story that is a very short version of something longer, show me that this was how the story was meant to be told. Fail to do that I'll come away (as I do from most flash fiction) thinking the writer was just too lazy to write a proper story.
* A mismatch can, sometimes, still turn out well - even Stephen King managed to write a small handful of short stories that I thought were very good, but (for my tastes) most were pretty ordinary. I only ever persevered with this short story collections in the hope of the rare gem, and because I loved his novels.
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