Etiquette or netiquette? This is the question

2NITE I’m going to address U AAF. I’m AATK and I hope that U are already AAS, not FMTYEWTK. I’m already FOMCL, imagining U reading this FYI and saying IGTP, IHU, but IIMAD, IHA!

Well, my friends (or shall I say MF), if you are frequent chat rooms users, I’m sure you won’t have problems in reading the above message. For the rest of the world, in case you are curious to decipher it, take a look at this abbreviations dictionary, it might enlighten you.

How nice they were, the early days of Internet and chatting, what unforgettable experiences and dialogues, such as “LOL”, “and I’m Simonne, nice to meet you” or “HOW ARE YOU DOING?”, “Why do you shout?”, “Sorry, I was not talking at all”.

Over the years, a new set of behaviour rules in the virtual space developed, called the internet etiquette, or netiquette. Even kids have their own netiquette. Each kind of space has its own set of rules: chat language is different from blogs or social networking places. Cannibals had their own etiquette, too: “ladies first!”, they used to say when they ate their prisoners.

Whatever these rules may be, there are a few universal ones which, if followed, can make you appreciated by any community, regardless how many abbreviations or emoticons you are able to remember:

1. Be polite. When you read a post that you don’t like, you can ignore it. You don’t have to rush into leaving comments such as “spam”, “we should kill the bastard” or similar nice things. If it is spam, the author knows it very well, there’s no need for a reminder. If it is not spam, he or she will feel bad or discouraged to post some more articles. Weaker writing abilities or writing for beginners do not transform us into spammers. And by signalling that to the world out there, you don’t prove that you care, you just prove that you are rude and mean. Besides, social networking sites give you the possibility either to vote or to bury a submitted story. You can make use of these buttons without leaving such nice spammy comments.

2. Think before you post. You wrote something you are very proud of, this is fine. But try to give it one more thought before launching it on the net. Does your story offend somebody? Is it interesting? Does it bring something new? Is it a collection of useful things gathered together for the ease of your readers? If you are thrilled by having your posts out there, you can skip the last three questions, but be aware that you’ll never have good quality audience for such poor content.

3. Take care at your spelling. This is very easy to do these days, almost every text processor comes with a spell checker included. Please use it, even though you are sure that you make no mistakes. It is so embarrassing to read articles which may contain some bits of interesting info, but they are full of mistakes. Such articles barely get any credibility and it is a shame, once you made an effort and invested your time in writing them, to get buried because of some stupid simple grammar rules you did not want to spend one minute checking.