Propriety, Netiquette, and Responsible Computing
 

I think that the biggest problem with the computer industry is (yes) a lack of morality. There's something about hiding behind a pc that brings out the worst in even your most devout of citizens. Pornography and Games are the backdrop of quite a lot of your average pc users. While there's nothing directly wrong with this it IS a distraction for all of us and not all of us are educated in the code of netiquette. Myself, not a clue. I took a class on pc101 in college and I remember the word netiquette. unfortunentally I never really learned it. So dose anyone have any Ideas on Propriety, Netiquette, and Responsible Computeing. Any Advice is welcomed.

don't be a dick?

don't say anything you wouldn't say to the person's face

try to write the way you talk.

proof read a little.

Around here?

I think a good guide for your etiquette questions for behavior would be just about the same as what you'd use as a guide for your behavior in real life in most other social situations. Like a party, or bowling night, or a camping trip, or church. You know the golden rule, yeah? It works here too.

We do have a different language, mostly text, so some of the channels you normally rely on like tone, body language, gestures, etc... those do not translate well in text. But the rules mostly still apply. Treat others as you'd like them to treat you.

That.

You can choose the sites you frequent. If you refrain from clicking on Google and typing the word "tits" that would help with porno thing. In all honesty the only time I have ever encountered pornography on the net was when someone else downloaded something called "Teen-aged Sex Kittens" onto my computer. I had to reformat my hard drive to get rid of it.

The Cellar is a pretty free wheeling site in contrast with other forums out there. I get annoyed with forums that censor language or have strict rules about posting. I like the Cellar because it doesn't do this. However, its true that the best policy is to treat people on forums the way you would in real life. But people on the Internet break that rule all the time.

Cruise the net, lurk around various sites, and find ones where you are comfortable with the level of discourse. That's my advise.

I remember in the mid 90's the local tv news was reporting on the evils of widespread porn on the internet. This was before Google, when search results were not as good. They were interviewing this little old lady. Picture her with her wavering old lady voice, saying "All I wanted was a recipe for hot crossed buns..."

I believe in responsible computing, that's why I always wear a condom when I'm on a computer.

on which finger?

...which I'm not sorry about.

Yeah, right. :right:

I did a Google search for hot crossed buns, and the first screen, anyhow, had only recipes and the lyrics for a nursery school by the same name.

Do you remember search engines before Google? Alta Vista would give you results, but they weren't very good.

Yeah, like Dog Pile or Lycos and such. They weren't as good as Google now is, but none of them ever pointed me to a porn site, either. I don't know. I am completely uninterested in porn (the real thing is MUCH more fun :blush:). And in my experience if I leave porn alone, it leaves me alone.

Or maybe when you saw that they pointed you to pron, you just didn't click on it. Back then the person doing the searching was more important than the search engine. You had to actually think about how you were searching.

True enough. :neutral:

I miss that.

Search engines now, and google in particular, are so intelligent. You can throw in a mispelt, half-remembered something and somehow, much of the time, it interprets and presents you with the very thing you were looking for, alng with a bunch of stuff you didn't know you needed to know...

But a part of me misses those evenings spent trawling through my favourite search engines, looking for info on this show, or that actor. Skipping about between the different engines and meta engines, getting different results from each of them. Having to think creatively about your search terms to stand a chance of cutting through the mass of sites.

I still get to do that in some ways, thanks to the far less intelligent and intuitive search engines favoured by academic and archival sites and gateways. *blinks* the technology is there guys. There's no fucking excuse now.

But it isn't the same buzz as a crawl through the internet, treasure hunting and going off on side steps, following odd paths and finding strange places, guided by the most rudimentary maps.

Now I get to see so much more of what's there, and can explore far more widely than before, but I am doing it with sat nav. Way more efficient, and in many ways more fun, but sometimes I miss the old ways :p