July 3rd, 2008 By Justin Williams
Internet Netiquette: Your Suggestions
For next week’s Courier & Press column I am planning on writing a column about Internet netiquette and the snark that seems to have plagued most user forums. Read the comments on any Courier & Press article and you will find it dripping with cynicism, bigotry, and tons of snarkiness.
In the past, I’ve blamed this decline in online social skills to sites like Digg and many online forums that are frequented by the technofiles. These days, however, it seems the Internet asshat virus has spread to even the common folk who chime in on the newspaper’s site.
Luckily, I think that the It’s Evansville crowd is capable of conversing in a civil and friendly manner even when we don’t agree. It’s refreshing.
Because of this, I thought I’d open up the forum for you to share your suggestions for rules to live by when trying to interact with people on the Internet. If you have a suggestion, share it in the comments.
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DISCLAIMER: The views expressed below are those of their authors and not necessarily endorsed or supported by It's Evansville. In all cases, the comments provided here are offered as a courtesy and will be moderated. Any content deemed off-topic or offensive will be removed without notice. Posting a comment here boils down to two things: 1.) Think before you type 2.) Respect the thoughts of others. See our commenting guidelines for more information.
Justin Williams
July 03, 2008 @ 10:37AM
NEVER WRITE IN CAPSLOCK
Jenna
July 03, 2008 @ 10:41AM
never start attacking someone for topics that are unrelated to the topic in question….annoying.
Teresa
July 03, 2008 @ 11:57AM
Don’t immediately jump in and blame it on a certain political party/politician/social group/neighborhood. Proper grammar…it’s a good thing.
Warrick Reader
July 03, 2008 @ 12:57PM
My biggest criticism of the Courier & Press’ website is the number of readers who post comments that are totally unrelated to the topic of the article. I think the newspaper staff should remove any and all comments that are not directly related to the subject at hand.
Justin Williams
July 03, 2008 @ 01:04PM
I actually have a half-written email/blog post I want to send to the Courier about how I think they should improve their community interaction features. It basically whittles down to this:
This whole column/post was actually inspired by the special interest piece Kate Braser wrote on the couple with the Mystery Machine. The comments were completely derailed.
Kate
July 03, 2008 @ 02:36PM
Justin, I agree with most of your suggestions and would add: give us the ability to respond to an individual comment so that the original comment and response to it are not separated by lots of other comments.
Justin Williams
July 04, 2008 @ 12:06PM
Speaking of Courier commenters, I’m pretty sure they’ve violated all netiquette in the 3 Tech articles this week:
Sker
July 05, 2008 @ 10:34AM
Now, will they actually implement any of your suggestions? We’ll see. How about a separate post here for e-mail etiquette?
gmwong
July 05, 2008 @ 11:35AM
Only use facts/Don’t state something without knowing it to be true.
ch
July 07, 2008 @ 09:17AM
Don’t get emotionally tied into online discussion with a 15-year-old that is just bored in class and trying to push the buttons of anyone they can hook.
Jerry
July 08, 2008 @ 05:39PM
The thing that hacks me most on posters on forums or sites is when they misspell words. I am not talking about typo’s, I am talking about blatant misspelling of words. It only takes a few to do a spell check which is usually built in to most forums. Most of the misspeller’s are idiots anyway.