Software Reference

Rating: Recommended

Anybody who can remember the net before it was called the Internet will be at home with Matthew Strawbridge's (MS) book: it contains known advice from the days of net yore, updated and expanded for the many new communication channels available on today's Internet. The book, however, will be useful to veterans and neophytes alike.

Netiquette, should you not be familiar with the term, is the informal framework of rules and conventions governing how people should behave online. The origin of the word, we learn, can be traced back to 1982: the issue of how to behave online is almost as old as the net itself.

Online communication must do without the many visual and audio cues that help people understand one another when they speak face to face. Add to that the fact that often members of online communities come from different countries and do not always master the language that is used, and you have all the ingredients that may lead to your misunderstanding others or being misunderstood. Proceed with care, think twice before you click on the send button, give your interlocutors the benefit of the doubt, and resist the temptation to immediately fire off a reply: these guidelines, implicit or explicit throughout this book, will serve you well when online.

The book comprises three parts. The first part covers the various forms of online communication. Electronic mail receives, and in my opinion deserves, the most attention: it must be true that everybody who is active online has an email account, and understanding how to communicate via email is the foundation of any other online communication form. Forums (newsgroups and mailing lists), real-time messaging, web sites, blogs, and wikis are also covered. MS draws from available guides and books, and his own experience, to list a number of rules that should be followed when communicating online through any of these means.

I must confess to being mostly an email-based person, and I was happy here to find some of my convictions (obsessions?) spelt out in writing: make a distinction between people in 'To' and 'CC' fields; four-line signatures; limit the use of attachments; use plain text instead of HTML. But there is plenty of sensible advice for each of the online channels, and if you are going to make use of any of them for the first time you'd be well advised to have a look at what this book has to say.

But the Internet is no longer a place where we only interact with other people by writing. More and more we make use of servers to download or share files, watch videos, listen to radio stations, or buy and sell stuff. Often we have only a vague notion that other people may be using the same service, and that our actions might affect them. Present day netiquette rules must address also these aspects, and this is what MS does in the second part of his book. The underlying principle here is: do not hog the service, and be honest and fair when operating online.

Finally, the third part of the book deals with some of the plagues of the present day Internet: spam, and the various security risks (viruses, identity theft, fraud in general). Of course, spammers and fraudsters will not be reading this book and stop their activities, but we ourselves can do something against them by behaving in certain ways. For instance, be sure you understand the economics of spam, and never reward spammers by buying any of the products they advertize. Here MS does a good job of explaining the dangers and what simple countermeasures we can take, in a manner accessible also to the less technically minded user.

In summary, the book presents in a clear and concide manner the rules of engagement for online communication, from email to blogs and peer-to-peer networks. Some of the dangers of online communication are also discussed. Novices and seasoned users considering making use of one of the new online communication channels will find the book useful, and so will administrators of online communities and services who want to draft a code of conduct for their users. Finally, parents of cyber-teenagers might consider passing this book onto their offspring to help them learn the ethics of the net.

Giuseppe Vacanti
Reviewed for the ACCU, printed in CVu magazine, Vol. 19 Issue 5 October 2007