Assignment 2: Conceptual Research & Reflection Project

Concept #7: Netiquette
“Good communication practice on the Internet is not something one 'learns', but something one 'practices' so as to teach others, less familiar than yourself, how it is done.”

Although netiquette is a rather ambiguous term comprising of dozens of guidelines and practices, it could be argued that most savvy web users would tend to know bad netiquette when they read it, see it, or have a bad experience. One definition of the term netiquette could be the conduct of a user while communicating via the World Wide Web (WWW). An alternative basic definition of the term could be as simple as (Shea, 2006) a set of rules for behaving properly online.

When assessing netiquette one must realise the wide array of forms of communication that it can encompass. Netiquette can be judged and experienced when communicating and using programs and services such as email, SMS, text based chat, video conferencing, newsgroups, and even visiting websites in general. Although netiquette can be quite technical such as the consideration of the size of an email attachment, netiquette can also be as fundamental as not using upper case words within emails or chat programs, (Landsberger, 1996) as this is considered the sender is yelling or angry with the recipient. Some corporations and system administrators have taken the step to specifically train their employees as to what is expected by their employees in regards to business related emails. (A Technology Society, 1999) It is suggested that the invisible, electronic throw away nature of emails, lends itself to poor grammar and other bad literacy practices as opposed to a conventional letter or document.

Another aspect of netiquette that particularly interest’s me is website usability. As a web designer I constantly become frustrated with web sites that do not function or render correctly in my browser. This usability/netiquette principle can be applied to any electronic document and the ease of access for its intended audience. A website that does not load, a document that will not open or data that cannot be downloaded due to bandwidth restraints, can all be considered bad netiquette by their respective authors. Although netiquette guidelines are well documented and available to the general public via the WWW, users who are less proficient communicating via the WWW can be oblivious to the etiquette. I recently corrected a friend who used the incorrect practice of using the “Reply All” function within emails. The user in question was replying to me personally and there was no need for all 20 of the original recipients to receive his email reply.

Netiquette conscious users can always help and make suggestions to friends and colleagues but it would be nice to think that netiquette could evolve in a Darwin-Esque manner. Meaning users, developers and manufacturers who practice bad netiquette techniques would simply diminish and be forced to improve their conduct. This survival of the fittest, natural selection concept in regards to communication is probably an unrealistic ideal. The only way web based etiquette can improve is to be aware of and consider the issues the next time you use the WWW to communicate.


A Technology Society. (2009) Has Email Replaced Letter Writing?
Retrieved 13th January, 2009 from http://www.atechnologysociety.co.uk/has-email-replaced-letter-writing.html

I sourced this article in the hope of identifying the main differences between emails and traditional letters. I wanted to try and find out why incorrect grammar and other poor literacy techniques occurred more often in emails as opposed to letters. While the document supplied some suggestions as to why many emails are so poorly written, it also provided a nice brief historical perspective on how email became such a dominant communication form. My conclusions from the article compounded the idea that email is such a widespread form of communication, individuals should make every attempt to follow their correct native language’s grammar and spelling.


Shea,V. (1994) Netiquette
Retrieved 13th January, 2009 from http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html

Shea’s book and online version is arguably the definitive academic text regarding netiquette. Covering everything from the core rules of basic netiquette to business and social guidelines, the book and online version cover all aspects of courteous internet-based communication. Netiquette also provided additional insight and advice into areas such as flaming and violations, topics and areas that I hadn’t originally identified or thought about in great detail about. In summary the text helped me reinforce my original ideas and conceptions regarding netiquette and provided a solid base to reinforce my argument.


Landsberger, J. (1996) The Ten Commandments of Email Netiquette
Retrieved 13th January, 2009 from http://www.studygs.net/netiquette.htm




Concept #22 Public Space and Regulation
Advanced Internet users are alert to regulatory processes in public discussion and ensure that they do not break them without good cause

The World Wide Web (WWW) has allowed millions of users and like-minded people to collaborate and form user groups to exchange information. Through forums, discussion groups, newsgroups and social networks, the WWW provides a great way to discuss or scrutinise virtually any subject matter. At the core of these public space arenas, is freedom of speech and publishing power to the masses. These factors make the WWW a unique communication medium. With the vast amount of information and billions of worldwide users, it can easily be predicted that public communication spaces could quickly become clogged with useless information if rules were not set and regulated by forum moderators.

(Reed, 2007) Moderators are required within forums and newsgroups to control SPAM and abusive posts. Without the use of human moderation, public spaces often become nothing more than a useless database of advertising SPAM. Regulation and moderation also helps organise the public space into some order via forum subjects and logical categories regarding whatever is being discussed. The moderator concept however does have its issues. For example moderators have the power to delete posts or entries that they do not necessarily agree with. In some instances this situation could be interpreted as regulation morphing into censorship.

Unlike moderated forums, websites have no regulations as to what you can and can’t publish. (Monsters and Critics.Com, 2007) In various parts of the world we have seen everything from racist propaganda websites to advice on how to self-administer Euthanasia. Obviously sensitive issues such as these cause enormous controversy within society. China has taken the step of regulating and in fact censoring the WWW and what is available via their largest ‘Google like’ search engine, Baidu. In most other parts of the world the WWW is unregulated and therefore the integrity of published content must be evaluated and examined before one utilises the information. Developers of the world’s largest search engine Google would like to think that their search rank system provides an affective way to filter quality content from the useless information. While this may be true to a degree, (Schoemaker, 2008) social voting and user reviews may be one semi-regulation technique that will play a big role within search engine results in the future. This concept involves users reviewing web information and voting on its content and quality. To a degree this already takes place in many forums and newsgroups by an author defining one particular reply post as the definitive answer to their question or comments.

The utopian concept of an entirely unregulated public space may just be that, an ideal. With the WWW continually evolving and growing in size, in addition to the meta-data of any particular information, humans may play an important role through moderating and voting on the integrity of any given information. In years to come it will be interesting to see if the WWW remains a relatively unregulated domain.


Reed, M. (2007) How To Effectively Moderate Forums
Retrieved 18th January, 2009 from http://www.communityspark.com/how-to-effectively-moderate-forums/

In this Blog post Reed provides tips and guidelines for forum moderators. Reed owns and runs several high profile British online communities. He has won several awards and accolades in relation to his forums so this was a useful post regarding forum mediation from a user with some good experience. The post made me think about some of the issues surrounding forums and their administration. It consolidated the idea why a forum needs to be administered at all, which was a crucial element to the original concept.


Schoemaker, J. (2008) SEO Has No Future
Retrieved 18th January, 2009 from http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/05/07/seo-has-no-future/

Although this article may be disregarded as a blog post, I thought it was an important inclusion in my references as the post involved 236 replies from SEO experts and people working within the industry. The article focuses on how Google ranks its pages and questions the future of the SEO industry. The article suggests that Google may be valuing the comments of user reviews when evaluating a website. This was the interesting aspect, as human user reviews could indirectly be considered a form of regulation or moderation. It raise the question that if something is popular, does that necessarily make the product, information or service superior?

China Analyst. (2007) Baidu.com, Inc.
Retrieved 18th January, 2009 from http://www.cnanalyst.com/baidu.html

Monsters and Critics.com. (2008) Google to Remove Nazi Propaganda from YouTube in Germany
Retrieved 18th January, 2009 from http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1348776.php/Google_to_remove_Nazi_propaganda_from_YouTube_in_Germany




Concept #17: The impact of text-based real-time chat
“Communicating in real-time with text enables a form of 'authoring of the self' that is similar to the processes of face-to-face speech but which is much more amenable to authorial control, experimentation and reflection. Further, text-based communication carries with it the possibility for multiple, differing conversations occurring simultaneously, relying on the ability of the human brain to deal with text much better than speech.”

With the constant evolution and development of Internet technologies and the expansion of the World Wide Web (WWW). Text based real time chat has become a popular, legitimate form of communication. With the availability of free text based chat programs such as ICQ, MSN, AOL, IRC, many of these chat program developers boast user networks consisting of millions of users.

Like the traditional telephone, chat programs cross local and national boundaries allowing synchronous communication between remote destinations. One significant advantage chat based programs has is that the form of communication is relatively cheap or free compared to the traditional telephone for example. For no extra cost other than a basic Internet connection, a chat user can communicate internationally for hours, a service that would possibly run into the hundreds of dollars when using a telephone network. In addition to cost savings, real-time text-based chat communication provides a formal transcript of the communication. This transcript can be viewed at a later date and accessed to verify the discussion or a topic that was made during the conversation.

Drawing from my own experiences and occupation which involves managing the website www.seton.net.au, some time ago we implemented a Live Chat service that allows customers to chat with customer service staff as they navigate the website. Customers can enquire about products or talk to staff regarding navigating the website. Since the implementation of the service we have seen our order conversion rates increase and a clear correlation between someone who instigates a chat and their likelihood to make a purchase. Staff can be communicating with multiple customers at once and transcripts from the chat have also allowed me to identify problems and issues that occur more frequently within the website.

Although Chat provides certain advantages to other forms of communication such as multiple participants and conversations, the chat medium also creates some areas of concern. Chatequette like netiquette are guidelines to be followed when using a chat program. Due to the speedy instantaneous nature of online chatting, (Blooch, 2007) users tend to use poor grammar and language often over using unnecessary abbreviations. In addition when in large chat rooms with over 10 users, it is often difficult to keep up with the multiple messages and often group chats turn into nothing more than multiple smaller chats between individuals. This suggests we cannot cope with the speed in which we are receiving the information and the time it takes to interpret the data. Due to these factors one may naturally predict the next popular, Internet based communication tool should be full audiovisual communication. With bandwidth speeds gradually increasing in many parts of the globe and the popularity of programs such as Skype, there is definitely some value to this argument. However one of the interesting aspects of text-based chat seems to be the direct yet sometimes anonymous nature of the communication. Unlike video conferencing, chat users cannot view a live visual representation of whom they are communicating with, all they receive is an online handle name and maybe a small static image.

Depending on your technical capabilities and communication preferences, text-based chat programs may be an effective choice of communication tool to use. As always users need to weigh up all the pros versus the cons and make an educated decision when attempting to communicate online.


Blooch, M. (2007) Instant Messaging and Live Chat Etiquette Techniques.
Retrieved 13th January, 2009 from
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles6/messaging-chat-etiquette.htm

Similar to my first reference, Blooch’s article outlines the main etiquette concerns surrounding chat tools and programs. In addition to the common technical do’s and don’ts, Blooch elaborates on some of the more human behavioural related issues. The article made me stop and think about issues such as, the use of humour, paying attention, probing questions, confidential information and remaining non-judgemental. The article hammered home to me the point that no matter what chat method we use online, we need to remember not to loose the personal, human touch through the communication medium.


Martin, J. (1994) Chat Etiquette. Behave Yourself.
Retrieved 13th January, 2009 from http://www.goodchatting.com/articles/etiquette.phtml

This is a somewhat tongue and cheek article written by a long-term chat room administrator. Martin points out the largest etiquette issues associated with chat programs and humorously reminds the reader that there are actual people behind every chat online alias. Although the article may not be written in the most formal manner I believe it was a useful angle to read a chat room administrators concerns. I used this article to confirm some of my ideas regarding the problems surrounding chat programs.





Concept #33 Information and Attention
“In the era of the ‘attention economy’, readers and users of Internet information must be carefully craft, in their own minds, the kind of metadata which will – almost instinctively – ‘fit’ with the metadata of the information sources they want, so that – in the few brief moments of initial exchange, when a seeker of information encounters information being sought, rapid, effective judgments are made that ‘pay off’ in terms of further reading, accessing and saving.”

Information and the attention economy is by no means a new concept to business and individuals within a developed economy. Advertising and other commercial information exchange are some prime examples of the ‘attention economy’.
On a daily basis most citizens of the developed world experience advertisers fighting for their attention via the means of billboards, bus shelters, mail, television, radio or email.

With the explosion in popularity of the World Wide Web (WWW) in recent decades, it is somewhat natural that business would also compete via this medium for a user’s attention and potential purchase capacity. Although historically (ADMA, 2007) advertising has been seen by some sectors of society as a pain and side affect of capitalism, the WWW provides advanced possibilities for targeted information. Whenever a user purchases online, downloads a program or fills in a web form, we are being asked for personal information. By compiling this information, an online profile can be created and act as the metadata to our lives. Using this information, advertisers can target specific advertisements to our supposed needs and gain our attention within the crucial initial moments of delivering content. The social network Facebook is a good example of the attention economy and targeted marketing. Every time I login to collaborate with friends, I am served up an advertisement on a portion of the page regarding meeting single woman or developing a six-pack abdomen. Although the content of these advertisements is questionable, the subject matter is usually being dictated by my single status, age and other characteristics the network has gathered about me. (Aggarwal, 2008) Thinking about the implications of such marketing one can realise why online privacy regulations have become such a major issue in many parts of the world.

In addition to advertising, another good example of the magnitude of the attention economy would be the existence of the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) occupation. A simplistic SEO job description could be defined as improving the rank of a businesses, government or individual’s website in the major web search engines. (Valentine, 2006) Amongst other things, it is the SEO executive’s role to improve a websites metadata, content, structure, keywords and other technical aspects that will improve the visibility of the website online. The fact that the SEO occupation is a relatively new occupation that has evolved in the last decade, suggests that the online attention economy has escalated within recent years. In many ways the SEO occupation epitomises the attention economy, as it is their goal to grab your attention in the initial brief few seconds that information is displayed and accessible.

While using the Internet and many other media forms, users are making conscious and unconscious split decisions in regards to what information they are accessing. Although advertisers and information providers have become more targeted in recent decades, the WWW is increasingly becoming more complex to navigate due to the magnitude of information that exists. To continue to be a proficient online user, one needs to consider carefully the metadata regarding information they are likely to pursue.


Aggarwal, V. (2008) The Internet and Privacy: Regulations in Flux
Retrieved 14th January, 2009 from http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/market-insight-top.pag?Src=RSS&docid=147946167

Written by an economist, this research article describes the issues surrounding privacy. Published as late as November 2008 it suggests that in many parts of the world privacy laws and regulations are still somewhat in their infancy. Due to my essay containing a focus on advertising and direct marketing relating to the attention economy, it was valuable to understand the progress various governments around the world have made in relation to privacy laws.

Valentine, M. (2006) Ten Tips For Corporate Search Engine Optimization Jobs Search
Retrieved 14th January, 2009 from http://www.selfseo.com/story-19117.php

This is a slightly humorous article regarding tips for SEO professionals attending job interviews. It is the original article that prompted my essay concept that the SEO occupation is one of the best online examples of the attention economy in business. To those not familiar with SEO it also sheds some light on what is involved within the job description. Although the article is not very professional written I believe it holds some value from an industry insider.

Australian Direct Marketing Association. (2007) Do Not Mail Service
Retrieved 14th January, 2009 from http://www.adma.com.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=1999