Netiquette is etiquette for the net. It is an informal code that dictates one's behavior and the typing conventions one should use to be understood and correctly interpreted when on the internet.
Though the internet and the web are often confused, they are different things. The web comprises websites and webpages -- things viewable through a basic web browser and having a url that begins with something like http://. The internet is much larger and older than the web; it comprises email, chatrooms, and usenet (newsgroups), as well as several variations on these. Although there are web-based chatrooms and discussion groups, these are not considered websites. The reason for the distinction is that websites are published in much the same sense as books or magazines: users can read them but cannot easily contribute information. The other venues mentioned, such as usenet, allow easy communication and (especially in chatrooms) offer something very similar to conversation.
The web is peculiar in that the style of communication is casual and conversational, but the method of communication is written -- and furthermore, often only plain (ascii) text is available, so italics, subscripts, and the like cannot be used. The usual paralanguage is not available and new ways of expressing emotions and emphasis must be invented. Also, because the internet presents situations not commonly encountered in real life (such as the discussion group, in which users post messages of any length, often in reply to others' messages), new rules are invented (by general consensus) of what is polite, acceptable, annoying, or unforgivably rude.
Older codes of netiquette that I've found give the etymology of the word as "Network Etiquette", and only recently (the last year or two) has the origin been assumed to be "Internet Etiquette". Netiquette began long ago, probably with usenet. net at the time was short for "network", and only later became a contraction for "internet" (often written 'Net). Raymond defines the Network as:
The union of all the major noncommerical, academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the pre-1990 ARPANET, NSFnet, BITNET, and the virtual UUCP and Usenet 'networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial time-sharing services (such as CompuServe, GEnie, and AOL) that gateway to them.Rules of netiquette are fairly old; most of the authoritative works on it (such as Virginia Shea's book Netiquette) are from 1995 or earlier. The rules have changed little, although examples they give may often refer to IRC whereas today they would apply in web-based chatrooms or instant messenging; or they will refer to newsgroups but be equally relevant to web-based messageboards.
The purpose of emoticons is, obviously, to convey emotion, but why can't users just use English to describe or imply what they mean? I believe that the use of emoticons stems from the casual nature of the net. Books, newspapers, and business letters have never needed emoticons because a newspaper article may be artfully composed, edited, rewritten, proofread, and so forth until it conveys its message properly. But people writing an email or typing in a chatroom have neither the time nor, often, the inclination to leave all the communication to the written words. This is a bit different on Usenet, as we will see, but for the most part, smileys can help to explain that one is being sarcastic but not insulting -- something that can hardly be done otherwise with only three keystrokes.
Existent, but rare, are upright emoticons. These are much less expressive, due to the selection of ascii characters, but they include sleepiness: (-.-) and a face with a black eye: (0.-) .
Both of these are comprised of messages, each of which generally includes the name or email address of the person who wrote the message, a subject line, and the body of the message. Users of both are admonished to always make use of the subject field. In a news reader, a user can initially only see the subject headings and may read or ignore entire discussions ("threads") based on whether the subject line is intriguing enough. The same rule applies for email, for similar reasons (inboxes usually show the sender and the subject line). Composers of both sorts of messages should always fill out the subject line, and should make it a brief (20-30 character) summary or description of the body of the message. Spammers (we'll get to spam in a bit) often abuse the subject line to get people's attention. Some of them are honest -- "Hot XXX Babes!" -- but many either give no subject line (you'll read the message in case it is from someone you know) or give an intentionally misleading subject line -- "I found your keys" or "re: necessary information". In newsgroups, the subject line may fulfill purposes other than simply summarizing information; a user may wish to post only a very brief comment, and so may put that in the subject line along with "nt" or "n/t" to indicate that the message has No Text, eg, "Thanks! n/t" -- thus saving readers the trouble of opening the message to discover little or nothing inside. A custom that has fallen into disuse in many places is to include the word "long" in the subject of a post that is more than a few screens long, as a sort of warning to the reader. Also, if a puzzle or a suspenseful movie is being discussed, messages that explain the solution to the puzzle or the end of the movie usually have "SPOILER" in the subject so the user doesn't stumble onto unwanted information.
Another convention on usenet is to quote posts appropriately (these rules apply to email as well). This is usually done with > symbols. One must not alter the original text, but should cut out the irrelevant parts. Then, respond to each point after you quote it:
>stuff you wrote >more stuff you wrote My comments on it here. >your snide remark Me telling you how offended I am
Writing style on usenet is somewhat more formal than writing in chatrooms or in email, and so smileys are used less and good writing is valued more. But one peculiarity that the usenet people cling to is the overuse of acronyms. These supposedly exist for the convenience of the reader, but they seem to be more for the convenience of the writer (IMHO: "In My Humble Opinion" in four keystrokes!) and perhaps also to indicate one's familiarity with internet conventions. Any phrase that is used often -- With Respect To, Be Right Back, As Far As I Know -- becomes abbreviated. Variations of course proliferate: in addition to IMHO, we also have IMO (without the "Humble") and IMNSHO (NSH for "Not So Humble"). There are also chatroom abbreviations -- PAW (Parents Are Watching) or SCAW (Small Children Are Watching) to explain why one is hesitating to type something.
Quality of writing, at minimum a familiarity with rules of spelling and grammar, is required to be respected in a newsgroup. Virginia Shea writes:
People with bad spelling, in the eyes of most participants in newsgroups and discussions, are either uneducated adults (who they look down upon, both because of social status and because lack of education in general is associated with lack of education on the subject being discussed) or uneducated children or teenagers, who have not learned (or do not want to learn) about the topic. Both groups are especially unwelcome because they tend to be arrogant and/or trolls (as far as the regualar posters are concerned). Trolls, to give a precise definition, are people who post inflammatory messages to invoke responses, usually flames (the term "trolling" refers to fishing). Trolls may have any of several motivations, and many post in disguise -- for example, an evolutionist who posts as a creationist troll to evolution/creation debate groups, saying remarkably stupid things to try to lower people's opinions of creationists (I met one such character myself). But whatever their motivation, bad spellers are regarded as something along the lines of pond scum. "Emily Postnews" elaborates:You won't be judged by the color of your skin, eyes or hair, your weight, your age, or your clothing.
You will, however, be judged by the quality of your writing.
Q: I cant spell worth a dam. I hope your going too tell me what to do?
A: Don't worry about how your articles look. Remember it's the message that counts, not the way it's presented. Ignore the fact that sloppy spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.
Two things are very heavily frowned upon in usenet and on messageboards: spamming and stupid questions. Spam (which also occurs, and quite frequently, in email) is the posting/emailing of unsolicited messages, usually advertising pornography or get-rich-quick schemes. A typical spammer will send the offending message to every newsgroup or email address he or she can find. It's not that people on the net are opposed to advertising; most will cheerfully put up with banner ads at the top of every webpage they see, especially when that ad space funds the company that supplies them free email. The main problem with spam is that it violates either the individual's privacy (in the case of email) or the community of a newsgroup. Posters to a newsgroup become familiar with one another, agreeing with some and disagreeing with others. Newcomers are welcome if they respect the current members by respecting their etiquette. The worst ways to intrude are to post a message to other groups as well as to this one, only seeking to disseminate information and not intending to participate in a discussion (when this is advertising it is called spam, and when it is done to promote an inflammatory opinion it is called trolling); or to ask a really stupid question.
Shea explains:
I'm familiar with the belief that "there's no such thing as a stupid question." On the net, that's not necessarily the case. A stupid question is one that you could have found the answer to yourself with a little research, or one that you're asking in the wrong place....Hence the adage to "lurk before you leap." Lurking refers to a sort of eavesdropping in which the newbie reads posts for several days or weeks before speaking up. During this period one should also find and read the group's FAQ (list of Frequently Asked Questions, with answers). This way, the newbie will understand what the group is like and will learn a little about the topic, and may post respectfully. Lurking also indicates commitment to the group; it's hard to go newsgroup-to-newsgroup (as a salesman goes door-to-door) posting with abandon if that requires two weeks of thorough lurking at each group. Here is the advice of Emily Postnews on this subject:
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in? ...
Q: How about an example?
A: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc.
The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.
Flames are the typical response to "inappropriate" posts, as well as to anything the poster disagrees with vehemently. If the original poster replies with a flame as well, a "flame war" has begun. Flames are very insulting, usually sarcastic posts. Sometimes in a regular post, the user may be writing rather calmly but feels an urge to rant at some point. Then, the tongue-in-cheek flame indicators are used.
FLAMEON wow, that was phenomenally stupid! FLAMEOFFor (HTML style):
<flame> wow, that was phenomenally stupid! </flame>or even (HTML with an attribute and value):
<flame intensity=100%> wow, that was phenomenally stupid! </flame>There is of course no real <flame> tag in HTML, but posters are simply using the syntax in a joking way for their own purposes. In more technical circles, components of various programming languages may be used in a similar way.
There is little agreement about the appropriateness of flames (and of swearing) on the internet. Swear words are often replaced with asterisks (eg, f***) or inventive euphemisms, but not necessarily. Similarly, people are generally admonished to stay out of flame wars, but this is the one rule of netiquette that even veterans of usenet routinely violate. A few netiquette guides maintain that a little flaming is OK, as long as it's confined to a small part of one's post or doesn't extend past one or two messages. Apologies sometimes occur, but more often one posts an angry and defensive flame upon receiving criticism. Apparently it's much easier to insult someone when they are a collection of ascii text and not a real-life face. Virginia Shea explains that
Humans exchanging email often behave the way some people behind the wheel of a car do: they curse at other drivers, make obscene gestures, and generally behave like savages. Most of them would never act that way at work or at home. But the interposition of the machine seems to make it acceptable.