Internet Etiquette by Stan Horwitz (stan@vm.temple.edu) Senior Academic Mainframe Consultant at Temple University The Internet is a vast community of people from all over the world. In this global electronic community, the only impression other people have of you is based on what you say through your writing and how well you say it. A thorough knowledge of E-mail etiquette will help prevent misunderstandings. The following tips apply to sending any information you write over the Internet (i.e., Usenet, Listserv, and E-mail): Use mixed case text in your writing. Uppercase text denotes shouting so you may offend some people by typing in all uppercase text. All uppercase text is also hard to read. Never send chain letters via the Internet. Sending a chain letter can annoy recipients and cause hostility. Some recipients will return so many copies of the letter to you (mail bombing) that it could crash the system you use for E-mail. Other people will report you to your local system administrator who might suspend your Internet access privileges. Include a subject heading in each E-mail message you send. Be sure that your subject heading is brief and clearly indicates exactly what you intend to write about. This helps people organize and prioritize their incoming E-mail. Many people will ignore a message if it does not have a subject indicated or if it is vague. They feel that any message which does not include a clearly written subject isn't worth reading. Additionally, if you reply to a message, make sure your reply is relevant to the subject of the original message. If not, the thoughts you intend to convey in your message won't match up with what the subject says it should be about. This will confuse your readers. Don't post the same message to many different Usenet groups. Posting the same message on several Usenet groups at once is called crossposting. Many people read several groups and they get annoyed when they see the same message appear in different places. Crossposting also wastes network resources and people's time. Post your messages only to the minimum number of groups necessary. Don't post a message on a group unless the topic of your message pertains to the topic of discussion on that group. For instance, don't post a question about a computer problem on a group that talks about science fiction movies. Before you post a message to any discussion group, read through that group's postings to be sure you know what the group's discussion is all about. If you're not sure about the topic, ask on the group. Don't be afraid to post a message on a discussion group if you think the message is appropriate for the group. No one will bite you for posting a message as long as you don't consciously try to offend anyone. Electronic discussion groups work best when a large number of people contribute to the discussion. This free exchange of information or opinion is what helps to make the Internet a dynamic global community. As you begin to learn about the Internet and its various discussion groups, you will probably want to try your hand at posting messages to some groups. The best way to learn about this is to send a test message to a group, however, people who have been participating in that group (particularly busy groups) hate to see test messages interfere with the flow of the discussion on there. For that reason, a few groups were set up just for testing purposes. On listserv, you're welcome to try your hand at posting messages to test@vm.temple.edu if you're on the Internet or test@templevm if you're on BITnet. For Usenet groups, there's alt.test, misc.test. Most Usenet group hierarchies have a test group within them. Please use these groups for your testing attempts. Be careful in what you say and how you say it. E-mail is faceless. Unintentionally offending someone is easy because your facial expressions cannot be seen and the emotion in your voice cannot be heard. If you're joking, say so or use a smilie face symbol. For example, use :) to denote a humorous smile. A list of smilie faces is available via anonymous ftp on ftp.temple.edu and on many Gopher servers. If you receive a lot of E-mail which you requested, you are responsible to read it on a timely basis. Don't let your account overflow with E-mail. This can easily happen with some busy Listserv groups. If you don't regularly read E-mail from a particular list, sign off it. Many discussions have archives which can be retrieved from the appropriate Listserver. If you go away for a while and cannot check your E-mail, suspend your Listserv subscriptions until you return. The Internet is neither private nor secure. Some people can look at almost anything you send through the Internet, even private E-mail. Don't send confidential information (i.e., social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc.) to anyone else via the Internet.