Netiquette

People either get it or they don't. I'm on a lot of lists, and while I screw up sometimes some of the attitudes out there are just plain silly. You know them. My personal pet peeves, in no particular order:

A) Top-posting.

A lot of times this is just ignorance of the fact that top-posting sucks, and is considered to be a no-no on any list where the bubs are worth their salt.

B) Badly-formatted questions.

Most people want to help other people out when given the opportunity. But they don't want to work to help them out.

There is a big difference between:

"I have a 300MHz mac, should I run OSX or OS9?"

and

"I have a 300MHz mac, should I run OSX or OS9? It will be used for listening to mp3's, email and surfing the web and has 64 megs of RAM."

Without knowing the other information, you have to ask it. Not that big of a deal, except when you're having to do it over and over. The above is just an example- people should just be more detailed and think through what the other person may need to know in order to help them with their problem.

C) Works for me!

This one really grates, as I just don't get it. Someone will post to a list and say they're having a problem. Someone else will respond back saying "Must be you, I haven't had any problems."

This is just silly, and usually comes out of some defensive or ignorant attitude towards the problem. In many cases, it will end up being an isolated incident local to the user- but you don't know until you've figured it out and just pretending the problem isn't there doesn't help anything or anyone.

D) Self-serving advice

This one actually grates more than anything, as like the above it seems it's indicative of a larger personality issue.

If you're going to give advice, it should be what would be best for the person who needs the advice, not the person giving the advice.

An example would be a particular brand of mac or linux users, who *always* recommend a mac or linux no matter what user will need to do, even when it just isn't the best choice.

But it makes the person giving the recommendation feel better, because they've brought someone into the fold. *sigh* How much crappy advice has been given because someone wanted to feel validated?

All the above said, there is a big difference between doing something out of ignorance and doing something just because it's what you want to do.

The former if fine, it happens to everyone. The latter is just annoying, as, well, it's indicative of an immaturity and inexperience.

For future reference, here is a great page netiquette and here is a great page on asking smart questions.