There is a surprising lack of formal framework to netiquitte (“net ettiquite”), as compared to, say, the work in copyright framework that the Creative Commons has spearheaded. There is in fact a formal document defining netiquitte– last updated in 1995! The Responsible Use of the Network Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) published Netiquitte Guidelines as a request-for-comment memo. While dated, Section 3.0 “One-to-Many Communications” still applies. There are a number of outdated references– for example, that you no longer need to “read both mailing lists and newsgroups before you post anything”; this website, as with any contemporary discussion forum, allows you to browse through past stories and comments at your leisure. I have added some guidelines which reflect the architecture of the Civilities website:

1. Anonymous posts are not allowed here; the benefits of anonymity do not overcome the adminstrative costs of truly supporting it. There are other forums on the Internet which support anonymity. Often anonymity is supported merely in order to encourage first-time readers to post. In place of that, Civilities has a very quick registration process, and also supports distributed authentication from the Drupal site– you may login with your Drupal ID here.

2. Offensive language will not be tolerated. Users may report possible infractions to me. I retain the right to suspend any account, or remove any offensive post. I will record when I do this, on this page.

3. Your posts are limited to 2000 characters— about 400 words, or a page-and-a-half of printed text. This is intended as an exercise in keeping the system efficient for the server, network, and the users (25 lines of text also take up less than the whole screen). You should limit the amount of text you “comment out”, and should generally refrain from copying wholesale from other documents. You should do due diligence use hyperlinks instead. Certain users will be invited to contribute stories– which have no size limit, and which can better serve as a platform for follow-up discussions.

4. You are encouraged to pick viewpoints with your posts, and may skip a post by add a viewpoint to register an opinion on a post or story. This allows you to quickly and painlessly register your opinions without the worry that you’ll be inviting a “flame war”. In the long run, the viewpoints framework will illustrate to all users which posts provide value and which do not. You cannot add more than one viewpoint against a story or a comment, in order to prevent “ballot stuffing”.

Jon Garfunkel
March 28, 2004