netiquettes of blogging

“she also mentions some of the etiquettes of blogging, such as crediting links, not soliciting links, and not attacking other bloggers personally.”
taken from: mightier than the word blog, where it review rebecca blood’s popular book ‘the weblog handbook: practical advice on creating and maintaining your blog’.

“agree to disagree rationally, amicably. attack the person’s opinion, not attack the person. do not get personal and hurl names at the person.” (in my own netiquettes words)
netiquettes is the combination of net and etiquette, which means ‘the conventional rules for correct behavior on the internet. those techniques for using the internet that are considered appropriate to the majority of internet users.’

from 1996 to 1998 i was in the sangkancil newsgroup. then from end 1998 until currently i am in the beritamalaysia newsgroup. made lots of friends there, and met up with many of them too, including jeff ooi and bob (long long time before they began blogging) and also veteran journalist, MGG pillai. we had good lively discussions. one important thing i learn from being in these 2 newsgroups is the above advice (in green), or in an analogy of a ball game, “go for the ball, not for the player”.

this is only one of the many netiquettes that people who get on the net are advised to observed. from beritamalaysia, now and then i hop along a few forums/discussion groups, always keeping in mind this very important basic netiquette.

most certainly netiquettes applies to blogging too – for the blog owners herself/himself and for people (bloggers or non bloggers) who comment on people’s blogs.

for a good read of netiquettes, target especially for newsgroup, mailing list and forum, click here.

to continue reading, please click on ‘jog over for more’.
sure, as bloggers, we may have our differences. we may not agree with one another. we may argue and argue BUT most importantly of all, amidst our argument, never never revert to personal attack. you may not like what a person write about, so attack her/his point of views, not attack her/him as a person.

the problem with most people is that based on what a person write, they will form certain opinions (usually prejudiced) of that person. er… well this is not a problem actually since it is the norm, which everyone does. the problem comes in when some of these people, after forming their opinion on a particular person, without trying to go into a discussion (must add rational discussion) with that particular person, started attacking that particular person personally based on what s/he think of her/him… OR the person goes around telling everybody else what s/he thinks (like ‘poking fire’) of that particular person. that’s bad, man, bad. major offence to netiquettes!

why do you think some bloggers apply the rules that every commenter should registered (sign-in) before making comments? why do you think some bloggers will approve/disapprove your comments before it get posted? simple. they were fearful of those who breaks the rules of netiquettes… especially those who get abusive, and of course personal. and they are also wary of spam, troll and flame.

spam – is pretty harmless. they just fill up your comment box with sales or promos of stuffs. we do not see many spams in blogs (but quite a lot in newsgroup). well, even if there are spams in other people’s blogs, i won’t be aware of them because i’m sure they will be deleted at once… but at least i know none in my blog so far).

troll and flame can go together (such as “a troll will flame you…”).

an internet troll is describe as ‘a person who sends duplicitous messages to get angry responses.’ or an individual who regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to blogs, newsgroups, discussion lists, or mailing list email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion/

these people are usually what we would refer to them in hokkien, translate literally, as ‘eat free, nothing to do’. they will usually hop to different kind of forums (blogs) and ‘troll’ along the forums (blogs), or they would target a member (blogger) and wherever that particular member goes, they would ‘troll’ her/him. .

flame is describe as such ‘insulting criticism or remark meant to incite anger’.

flame, though, doesn’t happens often in blogs, but it does happen anyway. usually the person who throw a flame at a person’s blog, will do a ‘hit and run accident’ thingy. s/he will come in, flame you then never return. i am trying very hard to resist calling themn cowards since i have to bear with the netiquette to follow – never call names.

well surely as a blogger, you don’t want to fall into these catergories of sending spams, be a troll or flaming a comment. and most important of all, listen to rebecca blood’s advice (see the first top line of this post – in bold).

hmm…. i just realise, with this post of mine, i might be inviting trolls or receiving flame. what the heck… i’ll take them all in my stride and just ignore them. but if you have good, logical, rational discussion to counter-argue with me, i’ll welcome them.