Netiquette

What is Netiquette? Simply stated, It's network etiquette that is, the etiquette of cyberspace. And "etiquette" means "the forms required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be required in social or official life." In other words, Netiquette is a set of rules for behaving properly online. When you enter any new culture and cyberspace has its own culture you're liable to commit a few social blunders. You might offend people without meaning to. Or you might misunderstand what others say and take offense when it's not intended. To make matters worse, something about cyberspace makes it easy to forget that you're interacting with other real people not just ASCII characters on a screen, but live human characters. So, partly as a result of forgetting that people online are still real, and partly because they don't know the conventions, well-meaning cybercasts, especially new ones, make all kinds of mistakes Based on my Research Netiquette has 8 important Rules. This rules are very important in the Netiquette to make your clients more comfortable to you. Here are the Rules in the Netiquette: 

Rule 1: Remember the Human When you communicate electronically, all you see is a computer screen. You don't have the opportunity to use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice to communicate your meaning; words lonely written words are all you've got. And that goes for your correspondent as well. When you're holding a conversation online whether it's an email exchange or a response to a discussion group posting it's easy to misinterpret your correspondent's meaning. And it's frighteningly easy to forget that your correspondent is a person with feelings more or less like your own.

Rule 2: Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life The confusion may be understandable, but these people are mistaken. Standards of behavior may be different in some areas of cyberspace, but they are not lower than in real life. Be ethical. Don't believe anyone who says, "The only ethics out there are what you can get away with." But if you encounter an ethical dilemma in cyberspace, consult the code you follow in real life. Chances are good you'll find the answer. One more point on Netiquette ethics: If you use shareware, pay for it. Paying for shareware encourages more people to write shareware. The few dollars probably won't mean much to you, and they benefit all of cyberspace in the long run.

Rule 3: Know where you are in cyberspace Netiquette varies from domain to domain, what's perfectly acceptable in one area may be dreadfully rude in another. For example, in most TV discussion groups, passing on idle gossip is perfectly permissible. But throwing around unsubstantiated rumors in a journalists' mailing list will make you very unpopular there. And because Netiquette is different in different places, it's important to know where you are. Thus the next corollary: Lurk before you leap, when you enter a domain of cyberspace that's new to you, take a look around. Spend a while listening to the chat or reading the archives. Get a sense of how the people who are already there act. 

Rule 4: Respect other people's time and bandwidth Rule 4 has a number of implications for discussion group users. Most discussion group readers are already spending too much time sitting at the computer; their significant others, families, and roommates are drumming their fingers, wondering when to serve dinner, while those network maniacs are catching up on the latest way to housebreak a puppy or cook zucchini. And many news-reading programs are slow, so just opening a posted note or article can take a while. Then the reader has to wade through all the header information to get to the meat of the message. No one is pleased when it turns out not to be worth the trouble.

Rule 5: Make yourself look good online Pay attention to the content of your writing. Be sure you know what you're talking about when you see yourself writing "it's my understanding that" or "I believe it's the case," ask yourself whether you really want to post this note before checking your facts. Bad information propagates like wildfire on the net. And once it's been through two or three iterations, you get the same distortion effect as in the party game "Operator": Whatever you originally said may be unrecognizable.

Rule 6: Share expert knowledge It's especially polite to share the results of your questions with others. When you anticipate that you'll get a lot of answers to a question, or when you post a question to a discussion group that you don't visit often, it's customary to request replies by email instead of to the group. When you get all those responses, write up a summary and post it to the discussion group. That way, everyone benefits from the experts who took the time to write to you. 

Rule 7: Don't abuse your power. Some people in cyberspace have more power than others. There are wizards in MUDs (multi-user dungeons), experts in every office, and system administrators in every system. Knowing more than others, or having more power than they do, does not give you the right to take advantage of them. For example, sysadmins should never read private email. 

Rule 8: Be forgiving of other people's mistakes. Everyone was a network newbie once. And not everyone has had the benefit of reading this book. So when someone makes a mistake whether it's a spelling error or a spelling flame, a stupid question or an unnecessarily long answer be kind about it. If it's a minor error, you may not need to say anything. Even if you feel strongly about it, think twice before reacting. Having good manners yourself doesn't give you license to correct everyone else.This are the Important Rules in Netiquette. These rules are very important in Netiquette this will guide you to be a better networking person. Netiquette is a Good Work it helps you encounters many kind of person.