NETIQUETTE – Whats that all about?

26 Oct 2009

One of the things that we refer to regularly in our office is ‘Good NETiquette’ which includes email correspondence as well as on-line communication.

Just to get one of those little irritations off my chest straight away, is it just me, or do you get royally frustrated when someone who you send an email to, does not reply, at all! not even with a quick “thanks for that I will come back to you as soon as possible….” to acknowledge receipt?

I find this very irritating and something that just smacks of rudeness…. Oh and there’s one of those Netiquette rules, ‘keep any flame wars under

control – they will rage on for a lot longer on the web, as people will have the option of re reading and returning to the original posts, even after you have ’emotionally moved on’ :0)

Another of those ‘things we should all do’ is to “adhere to the same standards that you would apply in face to face contact” – its easy for ‘a certain’ type of person to act in an ‘inappropriate’ way when on-line (or in email), so regardless of the medium used, act in a sensible and reasonable manner. I know, its sometimes easier said than done, but WE always apply the ‘reasonableness’ rule. Just wait a few minutes, re read and then ask yourself “does this sound reasonable”…. ? If it does not, then say no more, but if it does, then send and be dammed (sorry, no that last bit is just my policy :0)

One of the biggie’s for me is “respecting other peoples privacy”, I really dislike it when someone sends out an email and it has MY details on it, distributed to everyone on their Contacts List, I guess most business users would agree (given the number and frequency of SPAM these days), but occasionally we deal with domestic users and they can be the worst…

Oh and that leads me onto my last point for this post, “be forgiving of other peoples mistakes”… I guess even if someone does do a ‘silly action’ then at least allow them to change and not penalise them too much..

OK, that last one is important, but just to go back to the first point made, if someone keeps ignoring my emails, when they do reply they publish my details to everyone they know and their response is inappropriate, I guess that would give me the justification to start a flame war and turn up the heat :0)

Just thinking out loud.