ase | Preaching to the Choir: Netiquette

So yeah, I am a netiquette nazi of the worst (slightly hypocritical) sort. Move-induced offline time dulled my awareness of certain painful quirks of the online world; now that I'm back, I'm wincing at every missed comma and abuse of netspeak I come across. So I'm going to break Rule Two (see below) and rant at the people who read this journal, who (on the whole) do this stuff right. I need to get this out of my system, but probably shouldn't e-mail offending parties with a detailed list of what's wrong with their netiquette, lifestyle choices, and journal color scheme.

So... the list.

Spare all our friends pages. Master the lj-cut. Use it on long entries. Use it on entries that reveal crucial plot points of the movie that you saw the midnight premiere of. Use it when you're posting lists and memes. Use it on bandwidth hogging images. Use it on space-chewing quiz results. We'll all thank you.

Trailing ellipses (... or .... or . . . .) used in quantity make you look uncertain and whiny. "Uncertain and whiny" is not an effective style... trust me on this one...

There is no Rule Three. This is just here to mess with everyone's Fight Club vibes.

There is no hard and fast rule, but in my experience there's an inverse correlation to time spent on LJ and IM and my interest in what you have to say. If you spend more than 1/3 of your waking life with your chat software of choice active and/or consistently update your LJ more than 5 times a day, there's a good chance you need to cut back.

Spellcheck will catch many egregious errors and most proper names. It will not catch every mistake you make. It might therefore be a good idea to reread before posting.

You are not e. e. cummings. Capitalize.

Conversely, before typing, look at your keyboard. There's probably a light labeled "CAPS LOCK". If it's lit, find the caps lock key (often located on the extreme left of the keyboard) and turn it off.
Repeat after me: paragraph breaks are your friend.

Spellcheck is not grammar check. Parse before typing and edit prior to posting, so we have a clue which "s/he/it" from the last sentence you're referring to.

You still are not e. e. cummings. Punctuate.

Free users get one lj code. Unless you are their best friend in the world, you're probably not getting it. So stop asking free users for their codes. Especially if you've already got your own livejournal, and are angling for that code so you can set up a community. Get a paid account and use your own codes.

This is all, of course, just my own self-centered opinion. I can't tell you what to do in your journal, any more than I can tell you what to do in your house or car. I can say that, as a rule, I derive a lot more pleasure from journals that follow these guidelines, especially one and two. Especially, especially one. Words cannot express my loathing of misused trailing ellipses. It's up there with, like, Snape/Neville or fluffy Spuffy for stuff that makes me wince just thinking about it.

A lot of people do livejournal right.

pegkerr writes absorbing entries about being a mother and author holding down a day job.

lizbee's and

tessfawcett's journals are great examples of fannish enthusiasm without an overwhelming "OMG character wuv!!!1!1!" factor.

monkeycrackmary writes a giggly "well yeah we're acting like teenieboppers, but it's fun, so who cares?" journal. Anyone reading this can probably think of people who write absorbing journals and break most of the rules set out above. It's generally easier on everyone if people stick to common variants of common grammar and netiquette, though.

Just my two cents. Hope it hasn't ruined anyone's day.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

and journal color scheme

I'll rant about color schemes - I've run across a couple where, when I go to read the comments, I cannot read handle of the poster! I'd have to highlight the handle to tell who it was!

I saw someone rant once about websites that used dark green text on black backgrounds. I sympathized. Please have some people check your custom color schemes for readability!

Aha. Color schemes. Knew I'd forgotten something.

I like the bright colors (neon yellow, green, red) on black sometimes - with the right font, they kind of "pop" and float a bit above the background in my vision. But the opposite - black on bright - would be rather overwhelming, I suspect.

Readability's also affected by monitor settings - I've occasionally discovered how bad an icon looked only when I've seen it on someone else's computer. Something that's subtle and sophisticated on one person's monitor is utterly unreadable on someone else's, sometimes.

This may not be the excuse for everyone, but a person who writes his/she journal with black on a too bright background might be color blind.

When I was in a paper apa, way back when, one of the guys bought the neon paper and printed in black on it. He could see it perfectly well and couldn't understand why the rest of the people in the apa were screaming the paper color was too loud to be read. His reasoning was, "Well, they sell it, don't they?" not realizing it was for posters with large thick lettering. He never got it was hard to read either.

Ack. I was actually throwing that out as a random example; I don't think I've ever actually seen that layout. Well, someone may have done black-on-yellow, but I think that was a Harry Potter fan with a Hufflepuff preoccupation, who mitigated the effect by choosing a less-than-brightest yellow, so can probably be forgiven.

*coughs* I realize I'm a prime offender for the trailing ellipses. Sorry about that, but how I type is pretty much exactly how I talk (except that I tend to be happier in text) so there's really nothing I'm going to do about it. *laughs* The amusing thing is that I do tend to be a grammer/spelling whore.

You're actually not the person I was thinking of when I wrote that. You've yet to end more sentences in trailing ellipses than in periods in any post I've read.

Sorry about that, but how I type is pretty much exactly how I talk (except that I tend to be happier in text) so there's really nothing I'm going to do about it.

Probably a good idea; massive differences would probably give people whiplash. *S* I try to cut back on cursing and random "um/like/duuuude" sounds when I'm typing, but otherwise make no huge efforts to distinguish typing patterns from speech patterns.

I get it right? Oh, good.

::preens::

You get it right; pass Go and collect your fangirl points. *S*

After checking out the part of the FAQ you pointed out, I am more impressed with LJ. It really has a lot of nicely thought out and worked through features. As someone who has seem computers evolve from being users hostile to, well, sort of user friendly, I see LJ as very, very well done.

Now to work on updating my use of HTML.

Some day I also hope to customize my journal page. I know what I'd like to do!

Some day I also hope to customize my journal page. I know what I'd like to do!

I know the feeling. You probably more progamming language(s) than me, so will probably customize before I do. You'll probably want to focus on reviewing cascading style sheets (CSS); if I understand correctly, livejournal makes extensive use of them.

Livejournal has been put together very well, IMO, and it shows in its popularity. It's easy for people with a smattering of word processing and internet skills to use, but also can be manipulated by experts with more programming skills to create something unique and very cool looking. The problem I'm running into is bridging that gap - I'd like to do some more stuff with my journal, but started trying to read about the new S2 system and was swamped by unfamiliar terminology very quickly. This probably needs I need to find some web pages about CSS, and learn more than the most basic of HTML.

Preaching to the Choir: Netiquette

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