Email Etiquette

Fancy Text
Email began as a text-only medium, designed so anybody with a computer and connection to a network -- regardless of the system's power, operating system or email client -- would be able to communicate with anybody else on the planet. Most email software gives the user the ability to encode the text -- usually using HTML -- with bold, underline, italics, etc.

The problem is that not everybody uses software that recognizes fancy formatting -- nor do they necessarily want to use it. You send:
I just now finished Dion Fortune's book, The Sea Priestess and I loved it!

Your recipient can get something that looks more like:
I just now finished Dion Fortune's book, The Sea Priestess and I loved it!

If you are unsure of your recipient's email capabilities (or preferences) and/or you want to maintain email purity, utilize the well-understood methods for expressing emphasis and intonation without all that fancy formatting: I *just now* finished Dion Fortune's book, _The Sea Priestess_ and I >*loved*< it! ! !

Bandwidth Hogs: Attachments: Executables
With all of the known viruses floating around in cyberspace, anybody that double-clicks on an attachment that ends with .exe will get what s/he deserves. Besides taking up bandwidth, many executables are hazardous to your computer. Delete any email with one.

Not many months ago, merely reading an email could not transfer a virus, trojan horse or other exploit to your computer. If you use Microsoft's Outlook email client, your world is less secure. Opening an email in Outlook can run ActiveX scripts designed for all manner of nefarious purposes. But it sure is user friendly, right?

Assume Publicity
Whether you are composing an e-mail message or writing your own WWW document, it is wise to assume that everyone in the world will read your words. Though e-mail is sent to only one person, it is very easy to forward an e-mail message to hundreds or thousands of people. Unless you have complete trust that the recipient of your mail will keep it confidential, assume complete exposure to the rest of the world.

The same rule applies to WWW documents, only to a greater degree. Anything put up on the Web is openly available for anyone in the world to see. That not only includes your professors and peers, but also the government, your future employers, students from other countries, your professors, etc. It is wise to be cautious with what you put on the Web. Since the people out in Cyberspace have only a small bit of information by which to judge you, it only makes sense to make the information as appropriate, representative, and informative as possible.

The Emotion Barrier
One of the biggest drawbacks of communicating electronically is the difficulty of communicating emotions through text. While our Wabash education has taught most of us how to convey academic or technical ideas in written form without incurring gross misinterpretation, it not necessarily prepared us for the challenge posed by the Internet's barrier to non-verbal communication. It takes a little more verbal finesse to accurately relay emotion, mood, and tone. Virginia Shea, in her article "Core Rules of Netiquette," expresses this idea: "When you communicate electronically, all you see is a computer screen. You don't have the opportunity to use facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice to communicate your meaning; words--lonely written words--are all you've got. And that goes for your correspondent as well. (58)" Derivatives of e-mail, which include USENET newsgroups, mailing list discussion groups, and bulletin boards, are all plagued by the emotion barrier. Overcoming it can be the biggest challenge of anyone attempting electronic communication.

If someone sends you an e-mail message that strikes you as just a little too critical, or you read a message in a newsgroup that seems a little too offensive, chances are that you're misinterpreting the intent of the sender. Perhaps the message that you are taking so seriously was intended to be taken sarcastically--or perhaps you have stumbled upon a newsgroup where no-holds-barred messages are tolerated, or even expected. Either way, it does no good to pour fuel on the fire of what could potentially become a "flame war," where a few people engage in pointless verbal warfare, usually as the result of a misinterpreted message or an undiscriminating author.

Where do these people get my email address?

Run programs that collect email addresses out of Usenet posting headers.
Cull them from subscriber lists (such as AOL's Member Profile list.)
Use web-crawling programs that look for mailto: codes in HTML documents.
Rip them out of online "white pages" directories.
Buy a list from someone who already has one.
Take them from you without your knowledge when you visit their web site. For the latest on web browser security issues, see http://www.cert.org.
Use finger on a host computer to find online users addresses.
Collect member names from online "chat rooms".

How do I keep my address off the lists?
For a junk-free mailbox, don't browse the web, don't put your email address on a web page, don't subscribe to a large ISP, and don't post to Usenet. In other words, don't use the Internet.

Some people have taken to forging their own From: and Reply-to: lines in their posts. They might add an easily-recognized "spam-block" to their address, or they might use those header lines to tell folks where to look for their real address (usually in the sig). Some attempt to boast of their elitist-Unix-nerd-programmer capabilities by burying their email address in a maze of code. Such measures, while effective, are frowned upon by some as "giving in" to the bulk emailers.

If you do a lot of web browsing, be careful about filling out forms; some outfits take such action as carte blanche to stuff your mailbox. There are also those who sell addresses collected in this manner. Don't assume that because you are visiting the site of a "reputable company" that this will not happen to you.

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