Netiquette

It's good to know a little about "netiquette" before you first go online, in order to stay out of trouble.

The Internet is more than just a collection of computers, networks, programs, and information: it's also a global community of people. In the early days some called it the Digital Nation. Like any community of people, it has its own conventions and customs. Just as when joining any unfamiliar community, you should make an effort to learn the customs, in order to avoid giving offense.

There are many resources online that give guidelines in this area: User Guidelines and Netiquette by Arlene Rinaldi and Wikipedia's Netiquette article are good starting places, and here's Yahoo's Netiquette category. You might also want to look at RFC1855: Netiquette Guidelines, last revised October 1995. I'll cover the main points briefly here, however.

The most important places for a new user to be careful are in newsgroups, also called Usenet newsgroups, in Web-based discussion forums, and in mailing lists. All these services have the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of readers in a few hours ... and if they are offended by what you have to say, they can all send you email. In general, find out what the customary thing is, and in the case of newsgroups and mailing lists, make sure you read for a few weeks before you attempt to post. Also, try to keep your posts relevant to the stated topic of the newsgroup or mailing list.

Newsgroups, especially busy ones, often have a FAQ file. Some regular reader of the group maintains it, usually on a volunteer basis, and posts it to the newsgroup periodically in the form of an article. If a newsgroup has a FAQ, you're supposed to read it before you post a question, to see if your question is already covered. This saves people's time. There's at least one Web archive of Usenet FAQ files, which allow you to check a FAQ file without having to wait for it to turn up in the newsgroup. Here's the Yahoo category on Usenet FAQs. Mailing lists have been known to have FAQ files too, although it's less common.

You can read all you want in perfect safety, in either discussion groups or mailing lists, even before you've learned all the ins and outs of netiquette. You just have to make sure you know what's expected before you post, that is, write an article that you post in a newsgroup or send to a mailing list, for everyone to read. You also need to read a newsgroup or two for a while just to understand how newsgroups work.

Unsolicited mass advertising on the Internet via email or newsgroups is called spam, and nothing will get people mad at you faster. See my Spam defense page for more on the spam email problem and how to deal with it.

It is possible to promote a business or a cause over the Internet, but you have to learn the customs of the Net community in order to do it politely. If you have any doubt about something you want to do, call or email someone at your Internet Service Provider, explain what you intend, and ask their opinion, beforehand. Even better would be to study the Netiquette links at the top of this section, go to the library and read some Internet books, think hard about the traditions of the Net, and become able to tell polite from rude without help.

You should also keep firmly in mind that electronic mail is not private unless it's encrypted. A good rule of thumb: don't say anything in email that you wouldn't want posted on the company bulletin board over your name. Email can be snooped at anywhere during its transmission, and most people leave both incoming and outgoing mail sitting on their PC's hard disk. Even if you delete it, it might still be recoverable using an undelete utility. "For email, the old postcard rule applies. Nobody else is supposed to read your postcards, but you'd be a fool if you wrote anything private on one."—Miss Manners (Judith Martin) Wired 5.11.

There's an ftp archive of newsgroup FAQs at:

ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/

RTFM in the system name of that archive stands for "Read The Freaking Manual" ... or something very close to that. It's a traditional abbreviation used in newsgroups, when responding to a question from someone who seems not to have tried very hard to find an answer on their own. The long-standing (and somewhat waning) Internet tradition involves much effort to help stumped "newbies," but you are expected to exert yourself, to try to dig out the answer for yourself, and reach an honestly stumped state, before appealing to the Net at large for help.

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