Definitions of Netiquettes

1) Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

netiquette [uncountable] informal
the commonly accepted rules for polite behaviour when communicating with other people
on the Internet

2) Oxford Dictionary
netiquette/ne.t.ket/ noun [ U ] SPECIALIZED

the set of rules about behaviour that is acceptable when writing an email or talking to
people in a chat room (= an address on the Internet where people can talk to each other using
email)
It's considered bad netiquette to use capital letters in an email because it looks like
YOU ARE SHOUTING.

noun
[mass noun] informal

the correct or acceptable way of using the Internet.

3) Merriam Webster Dictionary

Definition of NETIQUETTE
:etiquette governing communication on the Internet

Examples of NETIQUETTE
1. Writing an e-mail message in all capital letters is considered a breach of netiquette because it
looks like you are shouting.

Origin of NETIQUETTE
blend of net and etiquette
First Known Use: 1982

Rhymes with NETIQUETTE

aiguillette, alphabet, anisette, avocet, banneret, basinet, bassinet, bayonet, bobbinet, bouncing bet,
briolette, burgonet

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History
Netiquette's (from "network" "etiquette") origins pre-date the start of the World Wide Web.
Text-based e-mail, Telnet, Usenet, Gopher, Wais, and FTP from educational and research
bodies dominated Internet traffic. At that time, it was considered somewhat indecent to make
commercial public postings, and the limitations of insecure, text-only communications
demanded that the community have a common set of rules. The term "netiquette" has been in
use since at least 1983, as evidenced by posts of the satirical "Dear Emily" Postnews column.

Basics
Netiquette (short for "network etiquette" or "Internet etiquette") is a set of social conventions
that facilitate interaction over networks, ranging from Usenet and mailing lists to blogs and
forums. These rules were described in IETF RFC 1855.[1] However, like many Internet
phenomena, the concept and its application remain in a state of flux, and vary from
community to community. The points most strongly emphasized about USENET netiquette
often include using simple electronic signatures, and avoiding multiposting, cross-posting,
off-topic posting, hijacking a discussion thread, and other techniques used to minimize the
effort required to read a post or a thread. Netiquette guidelines posted by IBM for employees
utilizing Second Life in an official capacity, however, focus on basic professionalism,
amiable work environment, and protecting IBM's intellectual property.[2] Similarly, some
Usenet guidelines call for use of unabbreviated English[3][4] while users of online chat
protocols like IRC and instant messaging protocols like SMS occasionally encourage just the
opposite, bolstering use of SMS language. However, many other online communities frown
upon this practice.

The four basic rules of netiquette are summarized below:

Help the newbies
Research before asking
Remember emotion
People aren't organizations

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Help the Newbies

New users on the Internet are sometimes called "newbies". Everybody was a newbie once. It
is considered to be very good netiquette to share your knowledge and help others who ask
questions by email, in news groups, on mailing lists, and in chat rooms, thereby passing on
some of the knowledge you have gained. Help the newbies as you wish you were helped.

Research Before Asking

People on the Internet often get far more email than they can deal with. As a common
courtesy to do your part to minimize this email, you should always check the Frequently
Asked Questions files, search the Internet, and search the newsgroups for the answer to a
question before sending email to a human being. If it turns out that the question was easily
obtainable in an obvious place, you may annoy the other person and embarrass yourself.

Remember Emotion
Don't use capitals unnecessarily in email -- it designates shouting, and is considered rude, as
in the following:
I THINK THE FACTS PROVE THIS POINT.
If you want to emphasize a word, use stars or underlines sparingly.
I think the facts *prove* this point.
I think the _facts_ prove this point.
You can use smileys sparingly to signal emotions like smiles, winks, sadness, surprise, etc.
I wish I'd read this before! ;-)
I wish I'd read this before. :-(
Remember that subtle emotions and meanings do not transmit very well over email. Satire
and humour is particularly hard to transmit, and sometimes comes across as rude and
contemptuous. Particularly avoid sarcasm, which rarely communicates well. Similarly, don't
over-react to email or postings you receive. What looks to you like an insulting or mean
message may only be an absent minded and poor choice of phrasing, and not meant the way
you perceived it.
Be particularly polite when disagreeing with others. Wherever possible, acknowledge good
points made, and then respectfully describe the areas where you disagree to produce the most
productive conversation.

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People Aren't Organizations

Many people send email from their work email accounts because that is the only email
account they have. Never assume that a person is speaking for the organization that they work
for.
To ensure that people can make this distinction, some folks put a sentence in the signature of
their email at work that says something like the following:
"All opinions are personal expressions of the author alone".

Netiquette Of Sending
The following rules of netiquette apply to the sending of messages, and generally apply to
email, the newsgroups, and mailing lists.
Be brief
Use white space
Use descriptive subject lines
Stay on-topic
Be careful sending attachments
Copy the minimum number of people
Include your email address
Respect non-commercial spaces
Avoid flaming

Be Brief
Be brief. It takes considerable time and effort to read long messages. If you get a lot of email,
and a lot of them are long, then it is likely that you won't be able to read them all. You can do
your part to reduce this workload by using brevity to maximize clarity.
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This rule is less absolute on mailing lists, and much less so again for newsgroup postings,
since the obligation to read these messages is correspondingly less. If you have a good five
page essay, you should feel free to post it to a newsgroup. Potential readers will open your
message voluntarily by clicking on your subject line, and if they don't like the first sentence
of your message they are completely free to close it and proceed to another.

Use White Space

Use white space to enhance readability. Put a blank line at the beginning of messages, so that
when they are read by someone the message will have some blank space between it and the
header. You can send an email to yourself, or post a message to a test newsgroup, to see the
effect.
A blank line between paragraphs greatly helps readability.
Put a URL on a separate line, and indented a couple of spaces.
http://www.livinginternet.com/i/iw_packet.htm

Use Descriptive Subject Lines

What with work, friends, mailing lists, and spam, many people get more email than they can
easily read. You can greatly help potential readers remember what your message is about, and
decide whether or not to read it, with a descriptive subject line.
The subject line is one of the only fields displayed in an email Inbox or Usenet newsgroup
listing. A short, meaningful subject is the most useful element of information when one wants
to identify an email's purpose at a glance. Some examples of ambiguous and meaningful
subjects are provided below.
Bad Subjects

Good Subjects

Misc

Cirque du Soleil tickets

Request

Request for part number

Meeting

Meeting 9:00 Tues -- room

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Stay On-Topic
Never post off-topic messages, not related to the subject of the mailing list or newsgroup.
This takes judgment, and you should ask yourself a basic question: is this posting likely to be
of interest to this newsgroup or mailing list, or is there another forum that is more
appropriate? You might get a better response by searching for a newsgroup or mailing list
more directly applicable to your message.
Trolling is the act of posting a message highly off-topic or otherwise calculated to arouse
controversy and hopefully cause a flame war. The best response to a troll's posting is no
response, to recognize the purpose and ignore the bait.

Be Careful Sending Attachments

Be careful sending email attachments. Unlike an email message, which is usually about 1 kb
in size, an attachment can be many kilobytes or megabytes. Besides the fact that most email
systems have an attachment limit, you shouldn't send large attachments by email to people
with slow Internet connections, since you could tie their machine up for minutes or hours.
Don't send attachments to mailing lists or non-binary newsgroups. Instead, send a message
inviting people to email you directly if they want a copy.

Copy The Minimum Number of People

You can send a message to more than one person or newsgroup very easily, greatly
multiplying the bandwidth your message will require, but with proportionately lessor
relevancy. You should only copy more than one mailing list or newsgroup if the message is
genuinely useful and on-topic, and do your part to reduce everybody's email load.
When you get a message at work with several CC addresses, it is usually considered polite to
reply to all addresses. However, there are occasions when it may be appropriate to delete
some addresses, such as when you are discussing routine matters and senior personnel don't
need to be distracted.
If you mean to reply to just the sender of a message, always double-check the addresses on
your reply message before sending. It is very easy to reply to an email sent by a friend to
several of his friends, and then find that your email program has replied to all of the addresses
in the original message, and sending your personal reply to everyone by mistake. Some
applications let you change the default behavior of the standard reply function, usually
<ctrl>-r, between the options of "reply just to sender" and "reply to all".

Include Your Email Address

Always include your email address in your email or newsgroup messages.

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Sometimes people keep a copy of a message or newsgroup posting, but don't have a copy of
the header with the addresses, and so they won't know how to contact you later. This can
happen if your email or newsgroup posting has been forwarded or copied without the
headers.
A common preventive solution to this problem is to put your email address in the body of the
message itself, so that it won't get lost if the headers get lost. Many people do this
automatically, by putting their name and address in their signature.

Respect Non-Commercial Spaces

There are many places on the Internet that accept and welcome commercial messages.
Therefore, you should never:
Post commercial messages to non-commercial newsgroups.
Post commercial email to non-commercial mailing lists.
Send commercial email unsolicited to private organizations or people.

Avoid Flaming
Flaming is the act of sending someone an outrageously insulting message, whether by private
email or in a public Usenet posting, usually because you disagree with something they have
said. A good flame mixes a razor sharp wit with a devastating put-down so that the other
person will only make themself look silly if they dare disagree -- "The absurdity of your ideas
is exceeded only by the incoherence of your remarks, beginning with..."
Some people support the use of flaming to enforce good netiquette on mailing lists and the
Usenet. A flame can sometimes be funny, and may feel good to the sender, but should be
resisted whenever possible. A flame can give the impression that you are unable to respond
with more reasonable language, and can genuinely hurt the other person. In general, you
should take a disagreement with another user off of a mailing list or news group, and into a
civil and personal exchange by email between the two of you, letting others carry on with the
discussion. Also, keep in mind the considerable limitations on accurate communication of
emotion in a text medium.

Netiquette Of Replying
The following rules of netiquette apply to replying, and generally apply to email, the
newsgroups, and mailing lists.
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 Replying and forwarding

Summarize for the group
Check current information before replying
Reference past communications
Acknowledge important communications

Replying and Forwarding

The basic rules of replying and forwarding are listed below:
Reply to sender. When someone asks a question or posts an offer for information
or services to a mailing list or newsgroup, then you should send them an email
directly instead of posting a reply to the whole list or newsgroup which takes up a
lot of bandwidth for people that aren't interested in the topic.
Replying to the sender is also a good idea because the original sender may not see
your reply if they don't carefully review the list or newsgroup for replies, which
happens more often than you might think.
Minimize forwarding. If you receive an email to several people and need to
reply, you should pare down the addressee list to those that need to know or may
be interested in the what you have to say, to do your part to reduce the overall
volume of email. However, copy more people rather than less when in doubt, in
case people need to know the information for reasons you aren't aware of.
Forward when necessary. Make sure you don't forward an email to someone
who was copied on the original email, a mistake which is easy to make if you
don't first check the whole list of of To: and CC: addressees.

Summarize For the Group

If you post a question to a list or newsgroup, and you get several answers sent directly to you,
and they would likely be of interest to the list or group, then write a brief message
summarizing all of the responses and post it for the benefit of others.

Check Current Information Before Replying

Often someone will send an email or post a message, only to send a retraction or changed
information a short time later. Always check your recent email or the most recent posted
messages before replying to someone else's message, in order to make sure the situation has
not already changed, and that your response is still on-topic and useful.
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Reference Past Communications

Include a portion of a message that you are replying to when it is relevant. However, don't
include more than necessary, otherwise people will give up reading. Use the word <snip> to
indicate deletions.

Acknowledge Important Communications

If someone sends you an important email, it is polite to send them a quick acknowledgment
so they know you got it. For example, if someone sends you an email asking "can we set up a
teleconference tomorrow at noon?", then it would be polite to send them a note before the end
of the day, for example saying that you are working on getting a room, so that you don't leave
them wondering if you got their message.

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Netiquette Of Confidentiality
The following rules of netiquette concern Internet confidentiality:
Don't publicize other's email addresses
Never send what you don't read
Remember archiving
Respect copyright

Don't Publicize Other's Email Addresses

Don't distribute other people's email addresses to strangers by email or by posting messages
to the Usenet newsgroups, unless the email is on a public work and obviously intended for
distribution. Otherwise, you may be responsible for someone getting spam email from
commercial sites, and strange email from unwanted strangers.

Never Send What You Don't Read

Never forward an email you haven't read, or send someone an attachment you haven't
examined. Many people have been badly embarrassed by forgetting this rule, and the email or
attachment turned out to contain information they really shouldn't have forwarded.

Remember Archiving
Remember that many mailing lists, newsgroups, and even some chat groups and email
systems archive information. If you aren't prepared to have your words archived and recalled
at a later time, then don't send the message. This is especially important to remember if your
message contains information about third parties.

Respect Copyright
It is easy to copy something from the Internet and put it in an email or on a web page and
give the impression by mistake that it is your work. Always clearly identify the author of
work that is not your own.
Similarly, if you are forwarding or posting someone else's work, don't alter or edit their words
-- even to change what you may think of as mistakes. There may be a reason or importance to
a missing comma or misspelling, and you don't want to be responsible for passing on false
information. A small change can have a large effect later that you may not realize at the time.
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