E-SPEAIT Week 7

There are different etiquettes on how to behave in certain situations or places, having dinner at a fancy restaurant or attending a wedding. As online communication has reached new highs in popularity there should be some practices that people follow. Before anyone knew about Facebook and Twitter, Virginia Shea published her 'Ten Commandments' that are published in the book of Netiquette. Some simple guidelines have been followed for most of the time on the Internet dating back to early mailing lists.

'Ten Commandments' by Virginia Shea:

  1. Remember the human
  2. Adhere to the same standards of behaviour online that you follow in real life
  3. Know where you are in cyberspace
  4. Respect other people's time and bandwidth
  5. Make yourself look good online
  6. Share expert knowledge
  7. Help keep flame wars under control
  8. Respect other people's privacy
  9. Don't abuse your power
  10. Be forgiving of other people's mistakes


One interesting phenomenon that seems to gain popularity (but I’m sure will slowly fade out with generations) is anonymously commenting under news articles. I don't mean commenting as a civilized person but those angry and hateful comments. Comparing what we can see in the comment sections tends to go against some netiquettes.

Firstly 'Remember the human'. When people are commenting on news articles they tend to forget that the author and also the people mentioned in the article are human beings or they forget what the article was about because someone dared to oppose their opinion in the comments. Then it gets brutal. It’s like a mini war between anonymous users. They don’t know nothing about each other, but the insults get very personal. I got to admit, sometimes they come up with pretty creative stuff. This also goes against the 'Adhere to the same standards of behaviour online that you follow in real life' and 'Make yourself look good online' points. I seriously doubt that those people use the same language and attitude in real life, but you never know.

Secondly 'Help keep the flame wars under control'. I’m not sure, but I think news sites have someone who moderates the comments, if not maybe they should. I have seen when other anonymous people try to end the wars in the comments, but typically without success.

Another turn of events happens when someone makes a typo. Imagine you see two people arguing in the comments about facemasks. One of them makes a typo. Oh no. You can actually hear the other person crack their knuckles and prepare the avalanche of insults that's about to obliterate the typo guy. I think we can put that under the 'Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes' point.

As we can see, angry anonymous comments go against about half of the points in the 'Ten Commandments'. Those ten points aren't hard to follow when you're just a nice person.

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