Lesson Objectives

• To understand why you must be considerate of others when you do research.
• To learn the unique problems of e-mail as a method of communication.
• To learn how you can avoid certain behavior that contributes to the problems with e-mail and techniques that allow you to be the most effective with the e-mail you send.
• To understand the concepts of spam and flame wars, and the place they occupy in the world of electronic communication.
• To learn about the problems with pornography on the Internet.
• To understand the meaning of plagarism and the purpose of using citations when doing research.
• To understand the ramifications of vandalism of information resources.
• To learn how the rules of netiquette apply to your own publications on the Internet.

The Lesson

Showing Your Consideration

Doing research and adding to the literature of research are activities guided by an important principle. Whether you are searching the Internet for an answer to your question, using a printed encyclopedia in a library, corresponding on e-mail, or writing an essay to hand in to a teacher or an article for publication, you should always do your work showing consideration for others.

Showing consideration as an information seeker requires your awareness. Showing consideration as an information seeker asks that you will act a certain way when you look for information. No matter what the method is that you use when you look for or present information, showing consideration means that you remember that there are other people out there as well as you. When you search the Internet at a computer in a library or a classroom, others are working around you, when you use an encyclopedia to look up a topic, someone else is likely to be using that encyclopedia one day soon to find information on the same topic. When you send e-mail, you will have the opportunity to send mail to many people at once. When you write an essay or an article, you will incorporate the research of others.

Information seekers work in a world populated with many and diverse peoples. Information is something people produce. People's actions and thoughts make up the content of information. When a curious person moves within this world looking for answers, seeking particular pieces of information, he or she interacts with the information found or with the person who produced the information. When the curious person then becomes an information producer, he or she presents the new information and intends that it will reach other people. These people, in turn, will interact with the information, be effected by it, react to it, and possibly encounter the author of the information.

Because information seeking will lead you to "rub elbows" with other people, the research process requires that you be considerate of the feelings and rights of others. People's rights should be protected by the law. People's feelings should be protected by the common-sense awareness of others. How you handle yourself and the information you gather when you do research will demonstrate your awareness of the legal rights and human feelings of the people whom you encounter in the process.

Netiquette

Netiquette is the concept that online activities such as sending e-mail and searching or publishing on the Internet require following special rules of good behavior, or etiquette. The rules of good behavior appear widely in publications people have written on the topic. Few of them are definitive. Fewer of them are required by law. All the rules, however, are designed to remind the electronic traveler that his contacts are with a diverse world of people. The fact that you are traveling in a new medium does not mean that you can ignore the presence of people.

E-Mail Etiquette

The ability to send and receive electronic mail was one of the first functions of the Internet. E-mail is easy to write, travels quickly, and costs the sender little to post. E-mail users need to be conscious of the way electronic mail is transmitted when they compose messages as well as keep in mind that, despite the undeniable presence of technology, a person or people will be the ultimate recipients of their messages.

E-mail may be responsible for encouraging people who previously chose the phone as their favorite way to contact people to sit down and write letters. However, unlike writing a traditional letter, writing e-mail does not require finding paper, a pen and a stamp. It does not reveal one's penmanship. It does not rely on the traditional postal service and the obstacles that face a message traveling through the streets. In addition, differently from a phone conversation, a dialog on e-mail saves the message sender from moments of silence waiting to be filled with sound. And unlike a conversation in person, when you talk to someone through e-mail, you do not see their face and expression or hear their reaction. You know nothing about how your comments are received.

E-Mail and Emotion

The speed of e-mail communication may lead people to respond to messages more quickly than they might when they receive a traditional printed letter. The speed of e-mail may lead people to type and send messages quickly without proof-reading for typing, spelling and grammar errors. Despite the speed of e-mail communication, nonetheless, e-mail users need to regulate their emotions and eagerness to write so that they respond or send e-mail much more slowly than the e-mail goes out to others or comes in to them.

When you do respond to e-mail that may have upset you, you should choose your language and writing style carefully. Decide if it is really necessary, useful or appropriate to say what first comes to your mind. Does it matter if you receive a message with a spelling error? Would anything be gained by pointing out the mistake to the author? If you respond angrily to someone's electronic comment, will that jeopordize your position in your class, at your job, or with a family member or a friend?

The actual appearance of the text in an e-mail message also effects people. Using capital letters in electronic mail is considered the equivalent of shouting at someone. An asterisk (*) may be used before and after a word or words to add emphasis or to denote something that would be written in italics in print, such as a book title. Combinations of keyboard symbols are also used to show emotion. Using two keyboard symbols to make a smiley face, for example

: )

shows that you are happy.

It is easy to send out e-mail to many people at once. It is easy to forward e-mail you receive to others. It is, in most cases, impossible to retrieve an e-mail message once it has been sent or forwarded. Be cautious about what you write when you write an e-mail message. Remember that e-mail is transmitted through computer channels you do not own and cannot control. You may send off a message and it may be stored electronically in several places: on the server of your e-mail service provider, on the hard drive of the person who receives your message, on the server of that person's service provider.

 

Exercise: Who Gets the Message?

E-Mail and Clarity

Many people have e-mail accounts and rarely use them. Many people who use e-mail may have multiple e-mail accounts and may check their mailboxes frequently. Some people may have more than one account, but do not check the mail in each of these everyday. These people may favor one account over another. When someone gives you an e-mail address and asks you to send them e-mail, ask them how often they read their e-mail before you decide to use this means of communication. If they only read their e-mail once a week, you may do better to invite them to lunch tomorrow with a phone call rather than sending them the electronic memo. In addition, because not everyone checks e-mail daily, when you refer to dates and times in an e-mail message, be as specific as possible to avoid confusion.

Exercise: What Could Be More Clear?

Depending on the e-mail system they use, some e-mail users may have a difficult time sorting through what they receive. In addition, many people subscribe to listservs and get a large amount of mail each day. It is not uncommon to meet people who use e-mail and get a few hundred pieces of mail each day. Therefore, when you send e-mail it is important to include a subject heading on the e-mail that very briefly, but accurately, describes the content of the e-mail. The person receiving your mail will have a chance to review the subject headings of all his or her new mail and choose to read the mail that seems to be the most important. In addition, keep your e-mail messages as brief as possible, particularly if they are urgent and should be read as soon as possible. Because some mail systems cannot handle long postings, if you write a long message, it may never reach the person you want. Most mail systems let the reader know the file size of the correspondences received, and a busy person may choose to skip over longer memos.

Exercise: Find What's Useful.

Junk Mail

The ease and low cost of e-mail has made it a favorite outlet for advertisers to send electronic junkmail. Electronic junk mail, popularly known as spam, is sent in mass mailings. An advertiser may sent a single message to every customer of a particular online service provider, for example. Although it costs the advertiser little to send, the cost of storing and disseminating the electronic mail is carried by the service provider. Spam mail may arrive with a deceptive subject heading, so that the person receiving the mail opens the message rather than automatically deleting it. Many people dislike receiving spam mail because it fills up their mailboxes and takes time to discard. Many people are offended if spam mail is forwarded to them. Advertisers that may claim that their spam mailings are harmless, are ignoring certain issues, and individuals who forward junk e-mail to others are not likely to be appreciated for their efforts.

Flames and Flame Wars

A flame is an electronic message that may arouse angry feelings in the recipient of the message and incite the recipient to send back a message showing this anger.

A flame war is an sequence of postings of messages online, to a newsgroup or a listserv, that begins when someone makes a statement that a newsgroup reader objects to in a second posting. Other readers post additional messages taking sides with either of the first two readers, adding comments about subsequent postings, or asking for all the related postings to cease.

Here is a sequence of e-mail messages posted over several weeks to a real newsgroup. The conversation is about the handheld computing tool, the Palm Pilot. One person, who goes here by the name Mitch, began the discussion by asking if anyone knew of a Web site with instructions on using the Palm Pilot. The first message you will read is a posting to the newsgroup from Mitch himself that he found such a Web site. As you will see, Mitch's message solicited strong feelings in a person here called Dave, who read the messages on the newsgroup. Dave posted his message, more messages followed, and soon the newsgroup converstation had turned into a flame war. In the sample you will read, people's names have been changed, the original text is kept in tact and the messages are arranged in the order in which they were sent to the newsgroup:

Message 1: From Mitch hello!! I found a really cool palmpilot site I just stumbled upon and there are a million useful how-to e-texts there!! Check it out!! http://www.palmtastik.com Thanks!! Message 2: From Dave Not only are you an idiot for answering your own post, but the web site was down when I tried to access it. -Dave Message 3: From George You guys need to lighten up. Geesh. Envision this scenario: Mitch finds site; likes it; posts to newsgroup to share with all of you lovely people. Goes back to site; finds some more useful information; decides to follow up with a second message to reinforce the original message. Is Mitch stupid for answering himself? No, all of you are for being so closed-minded as to disallow for any other possibilities for why he would post a reply to his own message. Get a life people; lighten up. You think I'm EVER gonna share info with this group with the kind of abuse you give someone who does. Not no but HELL no. And I can just imagine all the hate mail I'm gonna get for having the "gall" to disagree with all of you rocket scientists. Flame away. Message 4: From Robert Cheers, I cannot tell you how much it saddens me to see folks call people stupid or idiots. Many of the folks reading this site are new to the Pilot scene. So, here is some advice that your mothers told you, probably on more than one occassion: "Either say something nice or nothing at all." If you can't write something nice, then shut your stinkin' holes. -- Robert Message 5: From Jill So, referring to other people's "holes" as "stinkin'" is following your own advice, and saying something nice? It's hard to do, isn't it? :) -Jill Message 6: From Alex take it somewhere else, please.

Flame Wars: The Fire Burns On

Flame wars will wage on as long as people are willing to spend the ammunition. In the case of a flame war, the ammunition is words. The weapons hurtling the words are people who feel compelled to speak out in response to others, even though their own comments will often not end the discussion and may, in fact, increase the furor.

Flame wars begin and continue over innocent-sounding statements, over well-intended statements, over statements intended to incite anger. As you can see from the sample comments, readers posting messages will attack apparently innocent statements as well as openly critical or offensive language. Readers will attack the content of a message, the language of a message, the spelling and grammar of the message, the length or brevity of the message. Readers will attack messages that follow the message. Readers will attack the writer of the first message and writers of subsequent messages.

Exercise: Putting Out A Fire.

Pornography and Censorship on the Internet

The use of pornography on a Web site is an area of Internet Etiquette that has been fought over in the courts since the Internet began. Adults, or people over 18 years of age, living in the United States may claim that using and viewing pornographic images and words on the Internet is protected by their freedom of speech. The use and display of sexually explicit materials involving minors or children under 18 years of age is prohibited by the laws of the United States. The ease with which children may access pornography, either deliberately by searching out pornographic terms, images and known-sites, or accidently through their research, concerns adults who want to protect children.

In doing research, you may find that your search for an unrelated topic may bring up sexually-explicit information because of the peculiarities of search engines and the composition of Web pages. As a minor, you are not permitted to view this information, no matter how innocently you have come upon it. You can skip over the unwanted sites; unfortunately, despite percautions that may have been taken, it is not uncommon that text and images of a sexual nature will appear when doing an Internet search.

Some locations where you use the Internet may use blocking software on the computers in order to prevent many of these sites from accidently or deliberately being brought up on the computer screen. Some people have argued that the use of blocking software in public settings is a form of censorship and interferes with the basic freedoms of adults while it aims to protect children. Furthermore, different communities and individuals have different standards for what they consider to be objectionable material, and many people will say that there is not clear definition of what material should be kept from the view of minors. The arts and literature provide numerous examples of creative products, many not electronically published, that some have called indecent and others have called legitimate art. Several pieces of sculpture from an exhibit of the work of Rodin, for example, were not featured when the art show came to a museum in Utah in 1998. The museum felt that the community they served would find these sexually-explicit pieces offensive.

When blocking software is used to prevent access to sexually explicit material on the Internet, furthermore, it may inadvertantly block out access to material useful for many types of research. Software that is programmed to prevent access to web sites that use the word breast will block out access to Web sites with information on breast cancer.

When you become an adult and, by rights, have access to a full range of material on the Internet, your own freedom should not prevent you from being aware of the people around you. Sexually explicit material should not be seen by children and many adults also may not want to view the images that appear on your computer screen. You will be showing your consideration for others by using your good judgement in what you choose to look at on a computer in a public place with many people around you.

Plagarism and Citation: Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Access to information in any medium, electronic, printed or verbal, means access to the intellectual property of the producer of the information. Intellectual property means that the creative product you see or hear belongs to someone else. Although the creative producer has chosen to let others view or hear the product freely, what others may do with the product is limited by laws that protect the producer. These laws are know as copyright and trademark laws. Copyright and trademark laws prevent you from making money by using someone else's creative product. You cannot, for example, sell tickets to a performance of the show Grease at your school without first buying the rights to perform the show for profit and giving the creators of the show credit. You cannot incorporate the theme song from the movie Mission Impossible into a CD-ROM game you design and sell without paying for the rights to use the music and giving the producer and artist credit.

Similarly, when you are writing a research paper, you cannot use passages that you read in a book or magazine, or find on the Internet, without giving credit to the producer of the thought. When you do research for school, you do not have to buy the rights to the intellectual property you incorporate into your own work. However, you must give a citation to the originator of the ideas you use. If you do not site the author of the words or ideas you use in your own writing, you are plagarizing that person, and you will face consequences.

Visit the Exploratory: Pick Your Style.

Citation is necessary in most formal writing and will continue to be required of you if you do research and write for publication. Writing for newspapers and general interest magazines, both printed and online, will not often require a formal written citation of your sources, but if you quote someone for publication in an article for the popular press, you must be sure to have their permission to use their name in connection with their words and you must report what they say accurately.

Exercise: Quotation Notation

Vandalism of Information Sources

You can show your respect for the creative work of others and for the community that shares access to the same resources as you by treating the physical vehicle that delivers information, such as a book, a computer, a computer file, an audio player, with care. Ripping pages out of a book or journal you find in a library may give you a free copy of the information you need, but prevents others who come after you from accessing the same information. Much of the material you find in libraries is not easily replaced. If you deliberately damage a book, the book you have damaged may no longer be in print, and the library will not be able to buy a replacement copy. The same is true for other material that is destroyed.

Ironically, studies have shown that mutilation of information materials occurs even in law and library school libraries. If you need a copy of something you read in a library, use a photocopy machine. If you are unable to make photocopies of what you need, give yourself enough time to do your work in the library so that you can take notes.

In addition to treating printed material with respect, treat electronic material with care so that others may use them after you. Stealing a mouse from a computer in a public library can be as disabling as amputating someone's arms. Hacking a computer file may lead an Internet-based operation to a complete halt. You cannot justify actions such as these, no matter what your personal needs are or what you want to show the world that you can do.

Authoring for the Internet

The rules above about carefully choosing the language and images you use when writing or doing research should also be followed when you write something for publication on the World Wide Web. The title of the World Wide Web is a reminder that all of the world, potentially, can see what you present on a Web page.

In the course of your studies, you will be learning how to write a Web home page. Choose with care what appears on this page. You may use this page to represent yourself. If you do not think about the style and content of your publication carefully as you create this page, the image you convey may not be what you intend or may offend people that you have no intention of offending.

In addition, how you design your Web page must take into account the limits and variety of technology available to everyone who accesses the World Wide Web. Not everyone will be using the same browser you prefer. Those who like the same browser as you may not be using the same software version of the browser. Some people, in addition, may be using a text-only browser, and any graphics you use will be lost in the transmission. Furthermore, the telecommunications connection that individuals use effects the speed at which they access information through the Web. Graphics and some page formats download slowly and might discourage a person who is trying to view your page. Consider including a link to a text-only version of your home page near the top of your file when you create a home page. This will give people the option to download your page more quickly.

Exercise: Home Page Trouble

Netiquette is a concern of those who do research on the Internet as much as it is a concern of those who write for the Internet. The rules in this lesson provide general guidelines for good research behavior. Rules provide a clear path, but sometimes your common sense will be what helps you to determine the best way to proceed with your search for information.