The Rules of Internet Etiquette

By Andrew Min

If you’re a Linux user, you probably use a forum, mailing list, or IRC chat room for getting community support. After all, it’s free (as opposed to commercial support), has users that understand your problem (no more tech support stupidity), and often, the original developers for really bad problems. However, not all answers are treated the same. Many are disregarded because they fail to follow the proper etiquette of forum or IRC posting. Here’s a short list of six rules to make sure you aren’t one of those.

Rule #1: Abide by the code of conduct of the forum

All Newsvine users are required to abide by the Code of Honor. Similar rules apply to almost every other forum or IRC channel out there (for example, Ubuntu’s code of conduct or vBulletin’s forum rules). Even if the site has no code or set of rules, you should pretend there is one (or use the Ubuntu one). A moderator or other user is much more likely to help a poster who is polite than a troll. Little fact of life.

Rule #2: Read the friggin’ manual

Before getting help, always read the software manual (see http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/getting_help_powerful_man_ual for a tutorial on reading open source documentation). Failure to do so is the number one thing that ticks off a forum or IRC member. And remember, forum and IRC members aren’t perfect and don’t always follow the code of conduct they should (especially IRC users). Why else do you think that RTFM isn’t simply RTM? No, it’s not because of Remember the Milk copyright disputes.

Rule #3: On a forum, search is there for a reason

Most of the time, someone’s already answered the question you’re asking. If they have, the search box found in most forums can come in real handy (if it’s not there, use Google’s site search. See http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators.html#site for a guide). Additionally, even if you can’t find anything, search the web (hence the term STFW) before posting. It could be on a mailing list, obscure site, or even another forum. If you find something, don’t ask it again. If you need to, you can post a reply to the original post saying that you have the same problem, but never start a new topic. You will make yourself forever the enemy of the forum community if you do this.

Rule #4: On a forum, utilize the title

Any journalism book, site, or course will tell you that the title is the hook that will grab attention. In forum posting, this is also true. But the title is also a place where you give detailed information. For example, “!@($%# Ubuntu broke” is a bad title. “Ubuntu gives error 5201 on boot up” is a good one. Obviously, don’t cram a whole three page log in the title, but try to put some information in to help people who may have expertise in your problem to find it.

Rule #5: People on the other end aren’t mind readers. Give information

Similar to rule #4, fill in as much information as possible in the forum post or IRC chat. If they exist, logs are a must if you’re asking for help about a program. Any error codes or error dialog boxes should also be included. Also, try running your program from a terminal (open a terminal and run the program) and paste in anything that comes up in the terminal. Even if they look really confusing, the person answering your question will probably know what they mean.

There are also rules about posting the logs and other debugging output. If your forum supports it, use the [code]yourcodehere[/code] tags. If it doesn’t there’s usually some way to make the text italic or at least look different from the other text. If you’re posting in an IRC chat, don’t even paste any terminal output or logs. This clogs up bandwidth and is really bad for readability. Use a pastebin like http://pastebin.com/ and then send the IRC users a link. Pasting anything longer than two lines is worse than not RTFMing.

Rule #6: Let others know it worked

Everyone (including me) has been guilty of this one. You post a question, follow all the rules, and get an answer. Whoopee! Now, you simply leave the thread, right? No. **Never** just leave. Many sites have an option to “Mark as Solved” (look under “Thread Tools” if you can’t find it). And whether or not your forum has a “Marked as Solved”, just leave a little comment saying, “Your method worked, everything is fine now!”. After all, how will others find your solution? For all they know, it failed miserably. You won’t get in trouble if you don’t follow this rule, but it’s just common courtesy.