Netiquette

What is Netiquette, and how does it affect me?
How often have you heard the term netiquette, and wondered what it was? To put it bluntly, netiquette is the proper way to conduct yourself's on the net. Be it while in a irc chat room to a WWW chat, from using page graphics to sending e mail, netiquette is there. Read on to discover the proper way of dealing with WWW concerns.

TAKING THINGS WITHOUT PERMISSION
How would you like it if you spent a long time on creating a something - a picture, music file, or document - and once you had it just right, placed it on your page. A few weeks later, your surfing along, minding your own business, and all of a sudden.. BLAM!! You see what you made on someone else's page? Not nice, is it? You should ALWAYS ask for permission before taking anything from the web!

GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
If you DO get permission from the owner, acknowledge it! Sometimes a simple credit will do; and sometimes you will be asked to provide a link on your page back to their page, so people know where you got that great material! If the owner says NO, please respect thier wishes. It is thiers afterall!

NEVER TAKE CREDIT FOR SOMETHING YOU DIDN'T MAKE!
You wouldn't like it someone did that to you, right? Besides, you would have a hard time explaining it to the person who created it, once they found out!

DON'T LINK TO SOMEONE'S FILES WITHOUT PERMISSION

This wastes bandwith, which really can clog the net down! When someone logs onto a site, if the pictures and stuff don't actually reside on that server and are linked elswhere, it can take forever to download. This also slows down the person who's site you've stolen this picture or whatever from. That's not very nice is it? So whenever you want to add something, make sure you put it on your server. Let's keep the web as fast as we can!

USING SOMEONE ELSE'S PAGE AS YOUR OWN
Don't do this! Again, how would you like it if you worked long and hard on a page, and someone stole the whole thing and took credit for it? The only time this is acceptable is if you have the web page owner's written consent - and DO get it in writing to protect yourself - and DO credit the creator!

DON'T SPAM
There are many different versions of spam, and I'll outline several here:

Spamming in e-mail If you are getting an unsolicited (meaning unwanted) email from someone, who has you in their CC list with a bunch of other people, this is considered Spam. Now, here is an example of a mass emailing that is NOT spam: At Enchanted Forest, the Community Leaders (CL's) all keep in contact by e-mail. To get many important letters out to everyone, from time to time we will do a CC with all the leaders in it. This is not considered spam because we are all expecting it. Now here is an example of using this procedure as Spam: Pretend you just did an update of your page, and wanted everyone to know it. You go into your mail list, and do a CC of EVERYONE. This can really irritate some people! If you want to let people know you've done an update, contact them individually! That is the correct procedure!

Spamming in irc and WWW Chat IRC stands for internet relay chat, which is a different aspect of the web. Needless to say, if you don't know or understand it right now, that's okay. Spamming here is when you type one thing, and keep hitting the send button over and over again, not giving the others in the room a chance to respond. People tend to frown on this, and you will quickly make people very angry with you if you do this! 

Spamming in a Newsgroup A newsgroup is where many people get together, and do posts on certain subjects they are all interested in. There are thousands of newsgroups out there, with many different interests and subjects. If you post something in a newsgroup that doesn't belong in that particular newsgroup, the people will get angry, because it slows down their download times. (When you are accessing your newsgroup, every posting takes time to load) Try to keep to the subject your uploading to, please.

Now, this may sound like alot of things to remember, but keep in mind, being a good netizen means treating others as you yourself want to be treated. If you follow these few guidelines, you'll have alot of fun, meet alot of good people, and make a few friends in the process!! Remember:

THE NET IS HERE FOR YOU TO HAVE FUN!!!

CLOSING NOTES:
This Netiquette page originally appeared at Random Magick but it was geared towards graphics. I felt this was a good start and I recieved permission to rewrite it so it would apply to any copyrighted material posted on the web - be it graphics, music, text, or code. Random Magick will hopefully update thier original page Someday. Feel free to use this page until then. I want to thank Random Magick for granting me permision to take this the next step. -- Manny

Background copyright 1997 by Rosalie Warman and used with permission

Twilight Realms is copyright 1999-2003 by Manuel Revilla, all rights reserved.