Prairie Rose Publications: Manners on the Internet

I grew up in a world without computers, cell phones, Internet of any kind unless you count short wave radio; not even calculators. We had telephones with long, curled wires to allow us to move around in the kitchen when we talked on the phone or, during my teenage years, a wire long enough to take the phone in the closet for private conversations away from the big ears of my parents. The only conference calls we had was on phone extensions if you lived in a house with more than one phone or had a phone with a party line (more than one household using the same line.) Etiquette was fairly easy back then: answer the phone politely, ask who is calling, whoever called was the one to end the call (etiquette according my dad) and too bad if they wanted to talk on and on, and ending a call was also to be polite. Some families answered the phone by a greeting and then announcing the surname of the family. (example: Hello, this is the McNeal Residence, may I help you?)

Well, things have changed. First there was e-mail. No one knew what the rules were in the beginning, so it was an anything goes situation. My first publisher was considered innovative for offering e-books. An author’s book had to make a certain sales amount before the book was published in paperback. There was no “Publish On Demand” back then so the publisher had to curtail the cost involved with paperbacks by selecting only those authors who had proven their worth. (I wasn’t one of them.) Keep in mind this was before Amazon changed the world with Kindle. Good luck finding anything to read those e-books from other than a computer. What a drag. Anyway, like most publishers there was a private e-mail line for authors and publishers. Since there was no established etiquette for e-mail, people said whatever they wanted. I remember the day some of the authors were perturbed with how the publisher was handling things and complained about the lack of communication between the authors and the publisher. Things got heated. When I say heated, I mean scorch your eyes out heated. The publisher was as rude and antagonistic as the authors. In the end, the authors left en mass demanding the rights to their work back. I was so disturbed by the way all of this was handled by the publisher on a public forum even though I did not participate, that I quietly waited for my contracts to end and snuck out the back door. The once reputable and innovative publisher still exists today, but is a tattered, pale relic of its former glory after this rude behavior on a public forum.

Yahoo groups were once very popular. Authors and readers gathered into these groups to share ideas and excerpts and converse. There were times when people behaved badly even though, by then, groups published rules for on line behavior. Some excerpts posted contained very descriptive sex scenes and covers that left nothing to the imagination. Yahoo has made it next to impossible to post covers other than in attachments and yahoo groups have given notice that all excerpts must have a rating. Good news since there are some young people in those groups.

Since Facebook made its way to the public it has become a great platform for writers, but once again, the lack of etiquette has caused some problems. We call them trolls, those anonymous people who join a conversation and feel free to say degrading and negative things, call people names, and then disappear. But there are other abuses to etiquette on Facebook mostly due to a lack of understanding the correct behavior in this public forum.

Have you ever had another author blatantly use your Facebook page to advertise their work? Usually they do this when they are either accepting a friend request or thanking you for accepting their friend request—and then you wish you hadn’t when the cover of their latest book and buy tags show up with that thank you. Then there are those who post a thank you sometimes with a giant picture on your post instead of using private messaging. This is particularly annoying if you’ve just posted something on your page. I don’t usually do anything about this kind of post because I don’t think it’s intentionally meant to cause discord. Friend requests are sometimes from people believing somehow that Facebook is a dating site. Ugh!

Twitter is popular, but I have noticed people are quite free with their rude and indelicate remarks on this platform, especially regarding politics and opinions. I’m still getting the hang of hash tags so I’m not a Twitter expert, but I still recognize bad behavior and etiquette. But from what I’ve seen, Twitter almost invites poor etiquette.

So what are some actual rules about etiquette, or I should say, Netiquette? I did some research and here are a few rules I found for proper behavior on line:

1. Use simple electronic signatures are enough

2. Do not cross post (post the same message over many channels)

3. Stay on topic

4. Do not hijack a thread (my pet peeve)

5. Do not bash someone or start a flame war

6. Try not to use all caps because it may look like you’re shouting

7. Since expression and tone are absent, be sure you make your intent known. Use an emoticon to show your expression or intent or employ an abbreviation such as LOL (laugh out loud) or BRB (be right back), etc.

8. Minor misspellings or mistakes do not need your comment. If it is a major error, make your comment using basic courtesy or by private message (which is what I would prefer.)

9. This is a personal peeve of mine: when you make a friend request, please don’t let your next request be for them to like your page. It gives the impression it was your sole purpose for the friend request instead of a common interest or belief.

10. Above all, be kind.

For further reading about Netiquette:

Zen and the Art of the Internet:

http://www.cs.indiana.edu/docproject/zen/zen-1.0_6.html#SEC44

Matthew Strawberg’s Webblog 2009 The rules of netiquette