In our normal and daily lives, we meet people in many walks of life. We introduce ourselves, exchange a compliment or two and we do all these in all sorts of friendly manners. On the online world however, the anonymity of people is different. Racism, stereotyping and plain slander can be found almost anywhere online. Just because we can’t see each other doesn’t mean we have the right to treat others or think of them lower than ourselves. The way you interact with people online has to be the same way you treat people in real life.

Read on to view some of my tips on how to show respect and gain respect from people online. Make this your guide as you journey online and interact with other people in blogs, message boards, chat and even emails.

1. Do not type in ALL CAPS. Typing in all caps is considered shouting. I’m sure a lot of you have seen people who annoyingly type in all caps in chatrooms or message boards. They primarily do this to get attention and I’ll tell you that with my job as a moderator it isn’t a pretty sight. It just seems unfair to me seeing everyone else typing in normal captions and this one single person typing in all caps to get my attention. Let me ask you this. Do you shout to people in real life when you talk to them even if that person is just beside you?

2. Do not leave the subject field blank. When replying to emails or message boards, the least you could do is copy the original topic of the message and put a RE: in front of it. That way the person you are replying to will know its directly related to his message. Even better, include your own custom message so everyone else will know what you are getting at. Making a subject will also make the job of the moderators a lot easier as we can identify which is an actual post/reply or plain spam.

3. Refrain from using too many colors in one single message or a color that is painful to the eyes. Though we allow colored text on posts and in chat, please keep them to a minimum. Yellow text on a white background is not cool and its irritating to look at.

4. Never give out personal information like phone numbers and home addresses. By now, all of us should know that it is difficult to trust just anyone you meet online. This is for your safety and everyone else’s.

5. Make a reasonable effort to use search engines for something you are looking for. Though forums and chat are places where you can easily get answers, the first place you might want to search for answers are the "about page" or the "FAQ or Frequently Answered Questions". If you can’t still find what you are looking for there is always Google.

6. Understand that you will be in a continual learning curve. All of us are. The internet changes really fast and many new things pop up on a daily basis. Back in the day we only had emails, then instant messaging came along, then youtube, facebook, myspace and everything else. Make it an effort to learn these new things for the benefit of yourself and everyone around you in cyber-space.

7. Always minimize, compress or zip large files. The internet has enabled us to send our photos, music and videos to everyone else in the world with ease. But please make sure you don’t send photos that are 3 mb (megabytes) in size or post a 4000 x 2000 pixel photo of your dog. Learn to compress them and make them smaller. This is especially important if you are posting images on a message board. Sometimes large images (1280×1024) will distort the layout and it will be a major inconvenience to everyone viewing the site.

8. Type sentences normally and try not to use leet or text speak. Please type normally as you would like writing a letter or an essay. Udrstnd that n07 3vry 1 knos l33t or txt spk (understand that not eveyone knows leet or text speak). Its also annoying to see a bunch of gibberish show up wondering what to make out of it.

9. Avoid posting "single liners". This is applicable mostly on message boards. Starting a topic with just the word "hi" is considered spam by most moderators. If you are going to say hi, please at least introduce yourself and say something on what you expect as a new member of the community.

10. Moderators and Administrators are human too. Moderators are there to make sure you have the best online experience, but please know that we too are human and we can’t be in a million places at the same time. We have dayoffs and breaks like everyone else so please forgive us if it seems that we aren’t around sometimes.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 4:25 pm and is filed under Sanrio Stuff, Sanrio Blogs Howto, Forum Howto, Dream Studio Howto. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.