Net Etiquette or the unwritten rules of communication on the net (piece 1.5)

Since the Internet has developed and expanded it’s content, now even more and more based on user-generated content, some have forgotten (maybe on purpose or to look cool) how to behave.

I first heard about the netiquette years ago (about the year 2000) when i started having a more intense activity on the Internet. They refer to a general conduct while posting/chatting/commenting/any other form of expressing one’s opinion and beliefs online.

We’re all still people, even on the Web and what disturbs people offline will bother them on-line as well.

This article is peice 1.5 because piece 1 was the article on Messenger Stupid Mass Messages (written in Romanian) and piece 2 or 2.5 is also an article in Romanian, “Yahoo Messenger, hi5 and the path of stupidity”. Also an interesting article on kinda’ the same note (also in Romanian) would be “On Cracking Yahoo passwords and other similar bullshit”

I’ll start off with some basic things on commenting on blogs, posting on groups/bulletin boards/forums/even on a YouTube video since you’re reading this on a weblog:

• Always post on topic (and if you post off-topic, don’t flood with lots of comments and mention before that it’s off-topic)
• Don’t double post (even if you made a mistake, like a typo, try editing your post and add another post only if your post could be misunderstood or that correction might make a big difference
• And be polite, even if you dislike the others opinion/video posted/any other reason keep in mind that everybody has a right to their opinion, in some situations the author might have put work into posting that blog article/video/anything and you needn’t swear for in 7 different forms on 10 lines.
• Don’t engage in a flame of war of other people, you’ll only make it worse.
• If you hate the one who posted the topic, that doesn’t mean you have to show it off and make stupid, mean comments. Try to respect the other and if you’ve got something against WHAT HE WROTE, also explain your opinions.

Now, I’ll head on to some more painful areas where people have totally forgotten like chats, especially on messenger.

• Masses: don’t give them away to everybody only if it is of interest to at least 90% of the people in your list and don’t send out overly general stuff / things which might annoy others.
• If you happen to add a new and unknown person to your list be polite to them, don’t be rude because they’re not who you expected them to be, you make mistakes too!
• Don’t use overly short acronyms / short-hand writing / expressions which he/she might not understand. You’re just waisting time but making it hard for the other person to read / undestand what you are saying and you are just waisting more of your own time by explaining afterwards. And think that maybe the other person doesn’t want to learn your nonsense, wanna-be-cool, shortcut writing!
• Respect the other person’s status. If their on Busy / Do Not Disturb then really, don’t disturb them or at least ask if you can interrupt them. Oh and the mass messages with content like “for those with DND excuse me”, well most won’t excuse you especially if he doesn’t give a shit at that moment/any moment about your wise-ass mass message.
• Don’t ALWAYS stay on invisible, let others know when you can be contacted. If you have annoying people in your list, stay invisible just for them, why do all have to suffer?
• Respond to messages. An by that i mean including off-lines (even if the other person is offline) and even if you’re busy, you can just say “Not now, layer please” .
• Ignore/ban people only unless it’s necessary and try to ask them nicely before to stop the behavior which brought you to this.
• Behave as you would in real life, don’t try to be cooler just because you’re online. Be yourself and respect the other person.

There are many more, these are just some i remembered now and have found recently to be most annoying. Maybe I’ll update with more as i run into them, in the mean time you can google it for more info.

For more details on how you shouldn’t behave on the messenger especially with mass-messages read my other article HERE (written in Romanian)

And before i end i’ll give you a link to see if someone is really off-line or just faking it (special thanks to Mihai). Click here for more details – all this can be done with no extra software, just your browser and for you programmers i’m sure this will really help if you want to embed such a feature in any scripts/software you design. Or, the easiyer way is on this site (sometimes it doesn’t work).

Enjoy and behave

Last update: 26 oct. 2008 @ 12:08