General Guidelines for Public Message Bases

One of the things you learn quickly once you start using electronic mail is that there is a set of (sometimes unwritten) rules about what is or is not acceptable behaviour on the networks. To a certain extent, each network has its own culture, but in general, there are certain behaviours which are acceptable or unacceptable on virtually every system. In some cases, the list owner or moderator of a conference may post explicit rules on a regular basis, like the beginning of each month. Others expect users to understand and abide by these conventions without having them spelled out all the time. In any case, with rare exceptions, the behaviours listed below are forbidden, or at least strongly discouraged, in most discussion areas.

You will notice that any of the unacceptable behaviours online involve " wasting bandwidth." The reason for that is consideration of others. In the case of BBS networks, messages are carried between BBSs by sysops making telephone calls to other BBSs, often incurring long distance charges, and, especially where echoes cross between continents, the cost can be quite high. Echomail may be free to users on most BBSs, but it is not free for the sysops who carry it. A message posted on an echo can appear on hundreds of BBSs around the world, and incur many dollars in communications costs as each sysop pays to pick it up. In the same way, on commercial systems or the Internet, users often have to pay to read messages. (On some systems, there is no specific per-message charge, but often users have to pay per minute to gain access to the system, so time spent reading messages is money spent as well.) This is magnified thousands of times when it comes to Internet newsgroups, as all of the newsgroups in the "big five" newsgroup hierarchies are expected to be carried by every host on the Internet, which means that a message posted to a newsgroup can end up being copied to millions of machines, and incur thousands of dollars in costs of communication charges and computer time. This is the reason that some newsreaders warn you about the resources which will be used by posting a news message, and ask you, "Are you sure you want to do this?" In any case, electronic communication networks are almost always a "public good" where the people who benefit from it are not necessarily the people who pay for it, and wasting bandwidth is seen as a threat to the entire community of users, since, if the network becomes too expensive to run, the people who are paying for it might just stop. (In the case of the Internet, no one party could possibly shut it down, but many educational insitutions and companies allow general Internet traffic to "piggy-back" on top of their own traffic, and should they withdraw their services, that could significantly slow down the network, at least in certain places.)

1. Off topic Messages. Most discussion areas are created in order to discuss a specific topic. Messages may wander a little from the main topic, provided that there is some relationship to the stated topic. For example, it is probably within bounds to discuss the best kind of antidiarrhoea medicine on a mailing list devoted to missions. However, messages which have no bearing on the topic at hand are annoying, and seen as a waste of bandwidth.

   One case of off topic messages which is strongly discouraged in many task-oriented discussion areas is theological debate. It may sound odd for a Christian discussion area to forbid theological discussion, but those which do so are designed to encourage co-operation, within specific areas, even between Christians who may have serious theological differences. The reason for declaring theological debate off topic is not to take one side or another on a given issue, or even to imply that a given issue is unimportant, but only to allow co-operation, within the bounds of that topic, between all Christians who are willing to take part. (Note: Just because theological debate is off topic in those areas does not mean there's no place you can indulge in theological debate. In fact, there are dozens of newsgroups, mailing lists, echoes, and other discussion areas designed for just that purpose.)

   The most annoying of all off topic messages are chain letters, hoaxes, and spam. For more information on them, see the section on online annoyances.

   There is one echo where the "off topic" rule doesn't apply, at least in the usual sense. The OFF_TOPIC echo was designed as a place to discuss all those topics which are out of bounds anyplace else. Any topic which generates a lot of traffic in OFF_TOPIC, and which is actually on topic in some other echo, may be steered gently in that direction.

2. Excessive quoting. This is related to being off-topic, and in the same vein of saving bandwidth by reducing unnecessary traffic. There is a set etiquette for quoting parts of the message you are replying to in your reply. The usual method is to begin each quoted line with an angle bracket, like so:

   > Where can I get the latest version of F-PROT?

   If there is a lot of quoting going on, it is best to include the initials of the person you are quoting, so it is easier for everyone to follow the discussion. Thus, if I (GS) was quoting a message from Another User (AU), who had in turn quoted part of a message from me, the resulting "conversation" might look like this:

   AU>GS> My favourite anti-virus programme is called F-PROT.

   AU> Where can I get the latest version of F-PROT?

   Look in the files section of your BBS under "Disk/Anti-viral Utilities." The latest version was just released through CDN last Monday, so it should be on your system be the end of the week.

   The lines which have "AU>" at the beginning are the comments from "Another User", and the lines which have "AU>GS>" at the beginning are where "Another User" has quoted part of a previous message from me. It may look confusing at first, but once you get the hang of it, it makes it much easier to follow involved conversations. (Although even with this system, if a conversation gets so complex that there are more than three or four levels of quotes, it gets extremely hard to follow who's saying what.)

   Many message editors automatically quote the entire message, with the angle brackets and initials, and therein lies a problem. It becomes all too easy to quote a multi-page message in its entirety, and then append a one-line comment, like, "Way to go!" or "You're wrong!" This adds a huge amount of traffic to the area for very little added content. Therefore, it is good practice to delete all parts of the message you quote except for those to which you are responding. The usual rule of thumb is that the reply you write must be at least as long as, or preferably longer than, the quotes you include. Also, you should not use fancy boxes around the passage you are quoting, or include things like greetings and taglines in the portion you quote. The leading arrows are sufficient, and take very little space.

   Also please remember to change the subject line in a reply to reflect what your reply is actually about. As discussion wanders from topic to topic, unless people change the "Subject" line from time to time to reflect the actual content of the message, people who are scanning messages by subject can get completely lost.

3. File attachments. This is related to excessive quoting, and again relates to saving bandwidth. It is possible to send a file attachment with an E-mail message on the Internet. This involves encoding the file so that it can be sent through the Internet, so the person at the other end can decode it again at the other end. Attached files are added to the end of a message as a string of characters, and are usually about 30% larger than the original file, because of the encoding process. Sometimes, you may be tempted to send a file attachment to a mailing list, but remember that everybody on the list will have to download that file, whether they want to or not. It's better to send file attachments privately, or, if you want to make a file available to a whole group, put in on a web or ftp site, and then post a message to the list telling everybody where to find it if they want it.

   In a related vein, many E-mail programs have the option of including "formatting" in a message, so that users can add things like graphics, italics, bold, specific fonts, and so on. Usually, this is accomplished by having one copy of the message in plain text, and then adding a second, "formatted" copy of the same message, either in HTML, or a proprietary format like RTF. While this might work well for messages passed between individuals with the same E-mail software, it is extremely annoying on mailing lists, where many, if not most, of the users of a given mailing list will not have the same software, and thus will get the formatted message as a useless file attachment. Thus, if your E-mail program has the option of sending "formatted" messages, please turn that option off for every mailing list to which you are subscribed.

4. Personal chit-chat. Because echomail is free to users on most BBSs, but netmail usually has a charge, some users deliberately send personal messages on an echo to save the 25¢ or 30¢ that a netmail message usually costs, but in saving themselves a few cents, they may be incurring tens or even hundreds of dollars for sysops around the world. On commercial systems or the Internet, the issue is not usually cost, but thoughtlessness. People simply don't stop to think that dozens or hundreds of people might be paying to read a message they post in a mailing list or newsgroup which really only applies to one other person. Despite the warnings about cost, many people (mostly those with flat-rate or free access to the Internet) treat news as their personal playground, and post dozens or hundreds of messages per day, most of which are of no interest to anyone except for the person posting them. This has made newsgroups very nearly useless as a means of communication, as the noise-to-signal ratio is about 100 to 1. Be part of the solution, not the problem: If you want to send another user a message which is only of interest to the two of you, send it via private mail.

5. Profanity. It shouldn't be necessary to point out that, especially in a Christian discussion area, swearing and foul language is never appropriate. Nor is sexual innuendo.

6. Flames. Personal attacks or insulting messages in public message bases are so common that a new slang term ("flame") has been coined to refer to them. The dynamics of E-mail are such that very strong negative feelings can develop over seemingly trivial issues. Some otherwise very promising networking efforts have fallen apart because there got to be more flames than civil messages.

   When somebody has posted a message which seems to insult you or ideals which you hold dear, stop to consider whether the poster was being deliberately insulting, or whether there is a possibility you misunderstood their message or their intent. If something really makes you mad, it's best to leave it for a while and come back to it with a cooler head. If you still feel you must "straighten them out", do it privately in a netmail message. Starting a flame war only stirs up everyone's negative feelings, and won't actually change anyone's mind.

   Then too, think about where you are. If you hold one theological position, and you were to go into a message base which is populated by users with a diametrically opposed theological position, then you would be the troublemaker. Your actions would be no more appropriate than those of an atheist getting into your favourite Christian area and making fun of everybody for believing in God. There are some areas which are designed for people of different opinions to debate one another, and some which are designed for people of similar convictions to support one another in fellowship. Learn the differences and respect them. Finally, if a person is persistently offensive, send a netmail message to the moderator, and ask to have their access cut off. Alternatively, if you are reading an Internet newsgroup, you can edit your "killfile" to filter out any messages from that user.

   I should also warn you that some people deliberately post offensive messages in public message bases, just to see the reaction when they get everybody riled up. This practice is called trolling, and you can read more about it in the section on online annoyances.

   Also, when you are posting a message, be aware that using ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IN A MESSAGE IS THE E-MAIL EQUIVALENT OF "YELLING!" If you post a message in all capital letters, most readers will assume that you are angry about something. Therefore, do not use all capital letters just for normal emphasis, or because you like the look, or to attract attention. The attention you attract will probably not be the kind you like. The usual way to place emphasis on a word or phrase (short of YELLING) is to enclose the word in *asterisks* to denote boldface or italics, or _underscores_ to denote underlining or italics.

7. Illegal activities. There are "pirate" networks which specialise in swapping credit card numbers, phreaking (illegal long distance codes), stolen passwords, pirated software, and creation and distribution of computer viruses. It shouldn't need to be pointed out that such unethical activities are not appropriate in Christian discussion areas.

8. Threats. Threats, including threatened damage to software or systems, law suits, personal harm, etc. are never appropriate in a Christian discussion area.

9. Amateur moderating. There is a strong temptation, when someone posts messages violating network etiquette, to send them messages "correcting" them. Refrain. The moderator is probably already handling the problem privately. If the problem persists, send a private message to the moderator in case they haven't noticed it. Do not post public messages to tell the offender to stop it, as that just adds to the traffic which is off topic. If someone is "trolling" (deliberately being obnoxious in order to get a reaction), the best way to make them go away is not to react.

10. Handles. Virtually all networks ban the use of "handles" or nicknames. Messages should be posted under the user's real name.

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