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It probably pays to familiarise yourself with these terms, concepts and ideas before you post on any forum on the Internet:

• Blogger's Code of Conduct
  The Blogger's Code of Conduct is a proposal by Tim O'Reilly for bloggers to enforce civility on their blogs by being civil themselves and moderating comments on their blog. The code was proposed due to threats made to blogger Kathy Sierra[1]. The idea of the code was first reported by BBC News, who quoted O'Reilly saying, "I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn't come through any kind of regulation it would come through self-regulation."

  O'Reilly and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas:

  1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
  2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
  3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
  4. Ignore the trolls.
  5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
  6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
  7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

 

• Netiquette
  Netiquette began before the 1989 start of the World Wide Web. Text-based email, Telnet, Usenet, Gopher, Wais, and FTP dominated Internet traffic, which was used mainly by educational and research bodies. 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 1988, as evidenced by early posts of the satirical Dear Emily Postnews column.
   
• Thread hijacking
  Thread hijacking in internet forum communication is the act of steering a discussion off-topic by discussing a subject entirely unrelated to the subject at hand.

While this can be an intentional act of trolling, it is often accidental - caused by participants in the discussion responding to a throwaway remark, thus taking the thread off at a tangent to the original subject matter. The results often provoke a feeling of resentment from the author of the original post.
 

• Flamebait
  Flamebait is a message posted to a public Internet discussion group, such as a forum, newsgroup or mailing list, with the intent of provoking an angry response (a "flame") or argument over a topic the troll often has no real interest in.

The most popular motive is the desire for attention and for entertainment derived at the expense of others. Posted flamebait can provide the poster with a controlled trigger-and-response setting in which to anonymously engage in conflicts and indulge in aggressive behavior without facing the consequences that such behavior might bring in a face-to-face encounter. In other instances, flamebait may be used to reduce a forum's use by angering the forum users.
 

• Sockpuppet (Internet)
  A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception within an online community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks with or about himself or herself, pretending to be a different person, like a ventriloquist manipulating a hand puppet.

In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that "sock-puppeting" is defined as "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company."
 

• Troll (Internet)
  In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.

The contemporary use of the term is alleged to have first appeared on the internet in the late 1980s,[3] but the earliest known example is from 1991. It is thought to be a truncation of the phrase trolling for suckers, itself derived from the fishing technique of slowly dragging a bait through water, known as trolling.[citation needed] The word also evokes the trolls portrayed in Scandinavian folklore and children's tales as they are often obnoxious creatures bent on mischief and wickedness. The verb "troll" originates from Old French "troller", a hunting term. The noun "troll", however, is an unrelated Old Norse word for a giant or demon.
 

• Hit-and-run posting
  Hit-and-run posting refers to a tactic where a poster at an internet forum enters, makes a post, only to disappear immediately after. The term comes from the hit-and-run crime on auto vehicles, in which the driver hits another car or person causing an accident and runs away. It is also known as making a "drive-by" posting, a play on the phrase drive-by shooting. The post often consists of a lengthy text making lots of claims that can be, but are not always, on topic.

Another variety is the sole posting of a URL or link that leads to material that might be used as a discussion primer, but with no added opinion of the poster. It differs from plain spam since forum spam often is posted by spambots, while hit-and-run posting on the other hand is done by a real person. Also, while spam mostly consists of advertising, hit-and-run posts usually have at least some bearing on the topic at hand. However, since the poster doesn't stay around to defend the posted material, or even discuss it, it is considered disrespectful, especially by forum regulars who tend to be angered by the fact that the hit-and-run doesn't become obvious until some or several replies already have been made.
 

• Godwin's Law
  Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an informal adage coined by Mike Godwin in 1990. The adage states: "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches."

Godwin's Law is often cited in online discussions as a deterrent against the use of arguments in the widespread 'reductio ad Hitlerum' form.

The rule does not make any statement about whether any particular reference or comparison to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that the likelihood of such a reference or comparison arising increases as the discussion progresses. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and wiki talk pages.

With our thanks to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia...