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Netiquette

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Article forked from Wikipedia and adapted for T-Vox.

Netiquette (a morphological blend formed from “Internet etiquette”) is a catch-all term for the conventions of politeness recognised on Usenet, mailing lists, and other electronic forums such as Internet message boards/fora. These conventions address group phenomena (such as flaming) with changes in personal behaviour, such as not posting in all capitals, not cross-posting to inappropriate groups, refraining from commercial advertising outside the biz groups and not top-posting. RFC 1855 is a fairly lengthy and comprehensive set of such conventions.

The rules of netiquette are slightly different for newsgroups, web fora and IRC (Internet Relay Chat). For example, on Usenet it is conventional to write in standard English and not use abbreviations such as “u” for “you” or “ne1” for “anyone”. These abbreviations are only slightly more likely to be tolerated on web forums, but are almost universal on IRC where, since discussion is real-time, they serve the practical purpose of speeding the flow of conversation.

Many IRC users look down on this form of conversation, though. Issues such as the level of tolerance for off-topic discussion or spoilers may also vary from one newsgroup, forum, or channel to another. The general rule in any of these discussion mediums is to “lurk before you leap” — get a feel for the local conventions before diving into conversation and inadvertently embarrassing oneself. Also, read the FAQ if there is one (there isn’t a FAQ for T-Vox, as it would contain most of the Wiki).

Forum etiquette

Please read our Forum Rules and Regulations as well as the ones listed here.

Certain rules of unspoken etiquette should be followed when using Internet fora. They include:

  • Read any rules and guidelines established by the community; some may have different regulations on a particular subject. Always be courteous.
  • Before creating a new topic thread, search to see if a similar topic already exists.
  • Follow standard grammar/spelling rules and try not to use slang.
  • If the forum is categorised, post in the correct section.
  • Include as much technical information as possible if posting a technical inquiry.
  • Stay on-topic.
  • Avoid double posting and Cross-posting.
  • Respond to topics started by others more often than starting topics of your own so that you don’t appear arrogant and unlikeable.
  • Avoid the use of all CAPITAL LETTERS in posts. (All CAPS is considered “shouting” and causes readability issues.)
  • Do not resurrect a very old topic if you have nothing extremely significant to add. This practice is known as a “necro”, short for necromancy, which is a form of divination which involves raising the dead.
  • Try to refrain from lashing back at a poorly behaving member or participating in a flame war; instead, notify the message board’s staff of the event.
  • When quoting a previous post, include only the relevant portion of that post.
  • Trolls will be properly disposed of. Please do not feed (encourage or respond to in any way) them. Alert a moderator if you feel someone is trolling.

Chat etiquette

All of the forum etiquette rules apply to the IRC channel. In addition:

  • In the web client, Operators (ops) have an @ sign next to their nickname. In other clients this may be a star or other graphic. If everyone has a little graphic next to their nickname in your client, ops will be a different colour. Ops are also listed at the top of the member list in the channel. The ops have the power to kick you out if you don’t follow the rules. If you continue to come back and disrespect the rules, you may be banned from the channel entirely.
  • Use of colours and effects like bold and underlining when contributing to IRC should be avoided. It is generally considered annoying and is often unnecessary. Having a script do it for you is even worse.
  • It is important to consider the privacy of other participants before sending them a private message. It is more polite to publicly request a private conversation first, for example.
  • Flooding a channel with notifications of change of nickname, or other off-topic material, should be avoided since other participants generally find it annoying.
  • Copy and pasting large amounts of text into the channel, even if relevant to the topic, is considered flooding and antagonises people. Instead, put it in a pastebin. The URL can then be posted in the channel instead of the text itself.
  • Advertising is not allowed.
  • a/s/l (age/sex/location) or similar questions are strictly prohibited. a/s/l in particular is considered quite rude these days.
  • Don’t get involved in petty arguments and drama. Use /ignore; that’s what it’s for. In the web client, type /ignore steve if steve is the nickname of the person you want to ignore. When you have someone on /ignore, anything they say will simply not show up in the chat window. (Everyone else can still see it; only you, and anyone else who is /ignoring that person, will not see it.) To stop ignoring steve, type /unignore steve.

Wiki etiquette

Please see main page MediaWiki for beginners.

The Wiki is written in UK English, with the exception of pages that relate specifically to one country, where that country’s version of English should be used. This is to avoid any confusion in meanings within the main country non-specific pages of the Wiki.

Vandalism of pages will not be tolerated. Recently there has been a spate of users editing certain pages such as the Nightspots page by removing certain entries completely. If editing these pages, please provide a reason for a specific listing’s removal either in the discussion page for that page, or by adding a note explaining the reason in the Summary bar at the bottom of the edit page.

Failure to follow this process will result in pages being automatically reverted back, and may result in persistent offenders having their IP address blocked from being able to edit the Wiki.

Reference

This article was forked from an article on Wikipedia that was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

External links