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Netiquette

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 Netiquette (neologism, a morphological blend formed from "Internet etiquette") is a catch-all term for the conventions of politeness recognized on Usenet, in mailing lists, and on other electronic forums such as Internet message boards. These conventions address group phenomena (such as flaming) with changes in personal behavior, such as not posting in all uppercase, not (cross-)posting to inappropriate groups, refraining from commercial advertising outside the biz groups and not top-posting. RFC 1855 is a fairly lengthy and comprehensive set of such conventions.

The rules of netiquette are slightly different for newsgroups, web forums and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). For example, on Usenet it is conventional to write in standard English and not use abbreviations such as "u" for "you" or "ne1" for "anyone". These abbreviations are only slightly more likely to be tolerated on web forums, but are almost universal on IRC where, since discussion is real-time, they serve the practical purpose of speeding the flow of conversation. Many IRC users look down on this form of conversation, though. Issues such as the level of tolerance for off-topic discussion or spoilers may also vary from one newsgroup, forum, or channel to another. The rule of thumb in any of these discussion mediums is to "lurk before you leap"—get a feel for the local conventions before diving into conversation and inadvertently embarrassing oneself. Also, read the FAQ if there is one.

Usenet etiquette

The following is a list of some of the more common rules associated with netiquette on Usenet.

  • The most important rule of netiquette is, "Think before you post". If what you intend to post will not make a positive contribution to the newsgroup and be of interest to several readers, do not post it! Personal messages to one or two individuals should not be posted to newsgroups--use private e-mail instead.
    • This is sometimes stated in other forms, such as "Remember the human".
  • Quoting should be interspersed, with your response following the relevant quoted material. The result should read like a conversation, with quotes indented to aid in skimming. A common mistake is to put all new text above the quoted material, without trimming any irrelevant text. This results in a message that is much harder to follow and much less clear context. Remember that your audience uses kill files, sites drop messages, mailbox quotas go over their limit, users might be dealing with thousands of pieces of correspondence a day and messages get delivered out of order: Assume nobody has read or remembers the message you're responding to, and does not have the time to figure out what context your response is in for themselves.
  • If the article to which you are responding was cross-posted to several groups, edit the distribution ("Newsgroups:") header to contain only those groups which are appropriate to your reply, especially if the original message was posted to one or more inappropriate groups in the first place.
  • Re-read and edit your posting carefully before you post. Check the spelling, grammar, and capitalization. Typing in all capital letters usually denotes screaming or yelling. Keep your lines to fewer than 70 characters. Do not post test messages except in their appropriate groups; wait until you have something to say. When posting humorous or sarcastic comments, it is conventional to append an emoticon, but do not overuse them.
  • Try to post in plain text, not HTML. Most readers use a text-only utility, so any HTML will be lost anyway.
  • Before asking a question, read the messages already in the group and read the group's FAQ if it has one. When you do post a question, follow it with, "Please reply by mail and I will post a summary if requested," and make sure you do post a summary if requested; or, if only a few people were interested, send them a summary by mail. This avoids umpteen people posting the same answer to the group and umpteen others posting "me too"s.
    • However, many newsgroups follow the rule "Post here, read here" (that is, they explicitly discourage posters from requesting offline answers to topical questions). This is because there may be lurkers who would benefit from seeing the discussion unfold online, and because questioners often do forget to post summaries of their findings.
  • Be proud of your postings, but do not post just to see your name in pixels. Remember: your future employer may be reading.

There is also a netiquette rule for how to deal with someone who has violated one of the rules of netiquette:

  • If you believe someone has violated netiquette, send him or her a message by private e-mail; do not post a follow-up to the offending post. Be polite. The author may not have realized his or her mistake, may be a beginner, or may not even have been responsible for the "crime" — his or her account may have been used by someone else, or the address may have been forged. Furthermore, a person who breaks netiquette over and over may be doing it intentionally to disrupt the group (see Internet troll), in which case public flaming over the violation would amount to what is termed feeding the troll.

To read more about netiquette, check out Gerson and Gerson's Technical Writing: Process and Product (Prentice Hall Publishing Company).

Forum etiquette

Certain rules of unspoken etiquette should be followed when using Internet forums.[original research?] They include:

  1. Read any rules and guidelines established by the community; some may have different regulations on a particular subject. Always be courteous.
  2. Before creating a new topic thread, search to see if a similar topic already exists.
  3. Follow standard grammar/spelling rules and try not to use slang.
  4. If the forum is categorized, post in the correct section.
  5. Include as much technical information as possible if posting a technical inquiry.
  6. Stay on-topic.
  7. Avoid double posting.
  8. Respond to topics started by others more often than starting topics of your own so that you don't appear arrogant and unlikable.
  9. Avoid the use of all CAPITAL LETTERS in posts. (All CAPS is considered "shouting" and causes readability issues.)
  10. Do not resurrect a very old topic if you have nothing extremely significant to add.
  11. Try to refrain from lashing back at a poorly behaving member or participating in a flame war; instead, notify the messageboard's staff of the event.

See also

Reference

This article is based on material taken from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing prior to 1 November 2008 and incorporated under the "relicensing" terms of the GFDL, version 1.3 or later.

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