Netiquette

After engaging in the Introduction and Overview topic of the course three weeks ago, I was working my way through the topic and read that “it is important that you freshen up on your Netiquette” (Central Queensland University, 2009). My immediate reaction was; What is netiquette?, as I had never heard of the term before in my life. Therefore, I continued reading the information in the topic and found out that netiquette is the “term which is used for describing the rules for electronic communication” (Central Queensland University, 2009).

After reading this definition, I just assumed that the rules for electronic communication were the service agreement and privacy statement which you click accept to when signing up to a new service on the internet, such as, a myspace account. Therefore, I decided that I would keep working through the topic and take the Netiquette Quiz, Level 1 (The New York Times Company, 2009) and I was quite surprised with my results as I received a mark of 70%.

Once I had completed the quiz and read some of the discussions which were occurring on the moodle forums, I realised that I do actually understand some aspects of netiquette, for example, I regularly write BRB to my friends when leaving a conversation that I am having with them on msn and apologize to them when I have accidently written in all capital letters. Where I learnt these practices, I am unsure of and I probably just picked them up off of other internet users during conversations with them. I think that the rules of electronic communication are actually quite unclear with users of the internet, as not all people believe that typing a message in capitals means that they are yelling. Having mixed beliefs makes it very hard to determine whether or not people are taking offence to the way in which you are communicating with them on the internet. Therefore, maybe there should be a Netiquette rule book which could be developed and required to be read prior to participating in electronic communication, particularly in the school environment, as this would help to minimise netiquette confusion, and help to ensure that the students of today are brought up using netiquette in their technology savvy environments.

Krystal.

Reference List:
Central Queensland University (CQU). (2009). FAHE11001- Managing E-Learning: Moodle site. Rockhampton, QLD, Australia: Scot Aldred.

The New York Times Company. (2009). Netiquette quiz level 1. Retrieved July 9, 2009, from
http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/netiquetteonlineculture/l/blnquiz2005.htm