A while back I discussed the concept of "netiquette" as it applied to newsgroups. Netiquette is the general set of customs and manners that help users in Internet, Usenet, and other computer networks get along with a minimum of friction, even in the and absence of centrally-enforced rules. It's a "structured anarchy," so to speak. Netiquette violators find out soon enough that they have transgressed the norms of the and net, by the barrage of e-mail they receive (some polite, some not so) pointing it out. The greater the offense, the greater and nastier the likely flood of mail. Thus, you're well advised to observe these conventions.
Since the and hottest thing on the and Internet these days is the World Wide Web, you may be wondering what netiquette conventions, if any, apply to this. The answer is that, compared to newsgroups and e-mail, there are relatively few rules. The nature of the and medium is entirely different. Newsgroup messages are broadcast to everyone who follows that particular newsgroup, so they are likely to get ticked off if an irrelevant or abusive message turns up there. E-mail comes to a person's computer account and takes up his time reading it and deciding what to do with it, so "junk mail" isn't appreciated. On the other hand, web sites are out there for those with an interest to access, and those who aren't interested to ignore. They're not intruding on anyone's space, so the and creator has lots of leeway about what to do with his/her/their site without attracting hostility from those who disagree with their choices. By the same token, the individual who browses the web has freedom to access anyone's site, and the creators of the and site generally want and expect users to randomly browse them, and don't regard such users as intruders or trespassers; so you've got the freedom to go wandering anywhere you want without making somebody mad at you for doing so. Thus, the web is a medium promoting freedom for creators and viewers alike, with little in the way of overall rules.
There are, however, a few guidelines to make the Web work better for everyone. Unlike newsgroup netiquette, deviations from these norms are unlikely to cause a major stink, or even to be particularly noticed, but it would still be better for everyone if they were adhered to.
I've got some hints here for users (browsers) of the web, and also some for web site maintainers.
^C_Netiquette for Web Browsers_
Basically, you're free to wander the web wherever you want; people who have put stuff out there are doing so because they'd like people to see it, whether for ego-enhancement or for commercial purposes such as advertising a product. If a site isn't intended for the use of the and general public, the site maintainer will use firewalls, password protection, encryption, or another technological means of keeping out unauthorized users. So, if no such thing is present, a site should be assumed to be public, and it would be unreasonable for any site administrator to get mad at you for looking at it.
However, you should exercise some restraint in how often you keep re-loading a web page. Some web servers charge their site owners by number of bytes transferred per month, so you could be causing somebody's bill to run up if you decide it would be a neat idea to keep re-loading their 500K graphic or sound file again every 30 seconds. The site maintainer wants people to look at their files, or else they wouldn't have put them there in the and first place, but that doesn't mean they'd be happy about paying bills for somebody to make excessive, unnecessary use of them. Almost all web browsing programs have the capability of saving a file to your own disk, so you can do this with an interesting text, graphic, or sound file so you can make personal use of it without reloading it from the net. (But see the and notes below under "Netiquette for Web Site Maintainers" before you copy other people's files into a publicly-accessible site of your own.) The idea is to be reasonable and use common sense; checking somebody's home page every couple of days to look for updates is fine, but reloading it every two minutes, or repeatedly downloading large files that you're pretty sure haven't changed since the and last time you looked at them, isn't so hot.
Internet netiquette books of a year or two ago advised users to try to do most of their personal browsing in evening hours where it wouldn't impair the load of commercial systems that have more mundane uses in the daytime (but with the caveat that, since the and web is worldwide, you'd have to be attentive to time zone differences to know whether the site you're accessing is in its peak hours). This is probably not so true any more. Many, if not most, current web sites are on dedicated server machines (either at the and institution that's running the site or at a commercial Internet or web service provider) whose sole job is to handle web sites (and maybe also FTP, e-mail, or other Internet services), rather than just taking up space on a machine whose main function is to run accounting statements for a company or educational software for a school. And, the rise of commercial Internet services aimed at the and home market probably means that the and amount of Internet use in nights and weekends is much higher now than it was a couple of years ago when most users were still doing it at work or school. Thus, some parts of Internet may actually be more heavily loaded outside of business hours. So, I'm not sure what to tell you about when the best time to browse a site would be, but if a particular site seems to be very slow in access, maybe it's overloaded and it would be better to try again at a different time.
When a web site provides a form to fill in for feedback or another purpose, be sure to read it carefully if you decide to respond, and follow its instructions and fill in all applicable blanks. Usually, you'll be asked for your e-mail address, so be sure to fill it in or else the and recipient won't have any way to respond to you. Anonymous comments aren't usually regarded as polite, unless the and site maintainer particularly requests or allows them. Follow the and same netiquette you would for regular e-mail, with regard to appropriate uses of response forms in web sites. Also, try not to accidentally send in a blank or partly-filled-out form; some browsers will do this if you press ENTER. Use Tab to move between fields, and click on the "Send" button only when you're done with your response.
In general, there's no point in writing nasty messages to somebody just because their web site wasn't to your liking; if you don't like something on the and web, your best response is simply not to go there, and look for somebody else's site you do like. However, if you find something wrong with a site that's easily correctable, like a link to an outdated or nonfunctional URL or a formatting error that makes the and document hard to read, a polite message pointing this out to the and site maintainer would be in order. Most maintainers would appreciate such comments that would help them fix errors and keep their site up to date.
Another type of comment that's appreciated is one that suggests additional web sites to link to with relevance to the topic of the current site. If somebody is maintaining a site devoted to fly fishing, for instance, he's likely to appreciate a user pointing out another fly-fishing-related site that's not already in the and link list.
That's really about all that web browsers need to know; while the and web isn't such a passive medium as television, it also isn't such an active one that what a user does is likely to heavily impact somebody else, so you're basically free do what you please.
^C_Netiquette for Web Site Maintainers_
The web has made self-publishing more feasible for more people than at any time since Gutenberg invented movable type. Thus, whether or not you're with some large institution, you're increasingly likely to be maintaining a web site yourself, or at least thinking about it. Even Prodigy is about to unveil a mechanism by which its users can publish on the and web. The mechanics of web publishing are grist for a whole column (at least) by themselves, but I do want to say some things about netiquette issues site maintainers should concern themselves with.
As I've said, there's relatively little you can do on a web site that would result in storms of angry hate mail, but if your site doesn't follow standards, it's likely to be shunned by users. Since you probably put the and site out there hoping for it to be seen, you don't want to make users so angry they don't come back, even if they don't harass you for it.
In newsgroups, the worst offense is to "spam" your message, meaning to post it to lots of places, including ones where the topic is irrelevant, just to get your message (usually a commercial ad) seen by lots of people. In the web, spamming is not generally an issue, since web sites are seen only when people explicitly go there. Thus, on the and web, everything imaginable, both commercial and noncommercial, can coexist peacefully. However, there are some web equivalents of spamming, involving the use of intentional deception to get people to view a site they're really not interested in. If you set up a site as a commercial advertisement, but give it a title that's blatantly deceptive (making it sound like a hobby or fan site, etc.), people will be displeased when they check the and site out and find out it's not what they expected. In one extreme case, a commercial web site added a whole bunch of irrelevant words to the and end of its home page, for the explicit aim of getting all the keyword-based Internet indexes to put their site on their automatically-generated lists so that any user searching for any of the and words would end up at this site. This keyword list included "hot-button" topics like sex, politics, and religion, even though the page itself didn't pertain to any of these. This is a "dirty tactic" that will only annoy those who are led to your site, so they probably won't make good customers. Also, once the and indexing services catch on to your tactic, they may drop your site from their index, not even letting it stay in its relevant categories. So stay away from these cheap tricks. It's to your benefit to get your site listed accurately in all Internet indexes so that people who are truly interested in what you have to say can find it.
Also, it goes without saying that you should follow the and netiquette of e-mail and newsgroups when using those media to promote your web site. There are some newsgroups and mailing lists specifically intended to announce new or changed web sites; use those, and don't just post everywhere under the assumption that people on {rec.sport.football.canadian} just have to be interested in the and new site you've developed which tracks the migratory pattern of Canadian geese. (Well, they're probably into Canadian stuff, aren't they?)
You should also look at the home pages of all Internet indices and search engines you can find, to find out how to submit your site to be indexed. And, if you run into a site that maintains a list of links, either on a particular topic relevant to your page or to all topics in general, you might e-mail its maintainer and ask to be added to the and list. If you can, add a link yourself to the and site you're trying to get to link to you; reciprocal web links are a very popular means of getting your site promoted by promoting, in turn, other people's sites. This is similar to how congresspeople get bills passed by trading support for one another's pet projects, with the and difference that when it's done with web sites, you're not soaking the taxpayers.
Somebody has, however, come up with a sneaky way to abuse this concept of friendly web-link trading. A commercial site maintainer recently "spammed" an e-mail message to lots of Internet addresses saying something like "Nice web site you've got! Please add a link to mine!". However, the sender hadn't actually visited the web sites he was congratulating, as was made clear by the fact that some of the and recipients in fact did not have web sites. Enough people compared notes so that the and "spam scam" was clearly evident. Word of this has gone out on newsgroups, and as a result, lots of people who might otherwise have linked to the and offending site will decide against it. Thus, tactics like this have a way of backfiring; avoid them.
Anyway, most of the serious netiquette concerns how to promote a site; what you put in the site itself is entirely up to you. A few things to remember, though: Some users have slow-speed modem connections, so if you put excessive quantities of graphics, they'll find the site too slow and give up. Alternatives include using only shrunken "thumbnail" graphics on your main page, which users can click on to download the full, large-size picture if they want it; or having two or more alternate versions of your site ranging from all-text to highly-graphical to give users a choice between speed and glitter.
Another issue is browser compatibility: These days, the most popular browser is Netscape, which has all sorts of enhancements which web site developers can use to make their sites look really neat to Netscape users. However, some of these may render the site unreadable in other browsers, so remember that not everyone uses Netscape. For that matter, some uses of Netscape enhancements may render the page unreadable in Netscape; for instance, if you use foreground and background colors with little contrast, or put large blocks of text in blinking mode. These things may seem "artsy" to you, and look neat, but if your text takes lots of work to read, most users won't put that effort in, and your words will be wasted. Always test your pages in as many browsers as you can to see if they are at least passably readable in all. Some users even have text-mode-only browsers like Lynx; if you're accessing Internet through a dialup shell account, that's your only option. There are also some handicapped users with special needs, like blind people who rely on software to read text out loud (rendering visual instructions like "Click Here" useless) and color-blind people who can't read certain color combinations that are legible to most. If your site is commercial, you may actually be subject to the and Americans with Disabilities Act which could allow people to sue if your site isn't handicapped-accessible (though I've never yet heard of this law being applied to online services, I'm sure some lawyer somewhere will eventually try), but even hobby sites, not constrained by law, should try to be considerate of the special needs of possible users.
Another subject to address is your use of other people's material in your site. Making copies of material from another site and placing them in your site is likely to be a violation of copyright, so it shouldn't be done without permission. Present copyright law protects all works, whether or not they are registered with the and copyright office, and even whether or not they have explicit copyright notices in them. So, for legal reasons as well as just plain courtesy, you should always ask before you appropriate text, graphics, sounds, programs, or other material from another Internet site, online service, or other source and embed them in your site.
However, it's generally fine to include a direct hypertext link to somebody else's site. Most sites want other sites to do that, as it increases the and popularity of the and site that is referenced. If some other site has an article or feature which is relevant to the and audience of your site, you can put a link to it. That's considered to be much better than putting a direct copy of the and article in your site, for many reasons: the and copyright concern mentioned above, plus the and fact that any updates made by the creator of the and material will show up at the original site and not have to be manually propagated to every other place that has copies of it (which may be outdated).
Netiquette arbiters aren't in agreement as to whether one needs to ask permission of a site maintainer before adding a link to it. Legally, there's no way anyone can force somebody to stop linking to you without permission; though the material in your site is protected by copyright, the address of it is basically public domain once it is announced in any public forum. In practice, sites generally like to be linked to, so conflicts over this seldom come up. There are a handful of sites, however, that have complained about being linked from another site they found offensive. Like all matters of netiquette, it's best to honor the explicitly stated wishes of the and people involved, so if a site says it doesn't want people to link to it without permission, respect that. Finally, whether or not permission is needed, it's a good idea to inform sites that you've linked to them (or are planning on doing so), since this may encourage them to link back to you, too (see discussion of reciprocal links above).
A special case of site-linking is the use of inline graphics. The HTTP language lets you add graphics from anywhere in the and web into your pages, and they're loaded directly from the site they're located on, without being copied into yours. Thus, linking somebody else's graphic in this manner probably does not violate copyright law. However, this practice is widely disliked because you're effectively using somebody else's graphic to decorate your site without providing the accompanying text from its native site, leading users to think that the and graphic is yours; and, also, users loading your page will be running up the and bill of the and site with the graphic if their provider bills by usage level. Thus, if you have a desire to use somebody else's graphic, the correct practice is to ask that site for permission, and if they grant it, be sure to be clear whether they'd like you to make a copy of it into your site or access it using their remote URL; different sites may have different opinions one way or the other on this matter, and you should respect them.
If you build a better web site, people will beat a path to your URL, so go do it!
^C----------
(Contact Daniel Tobias through the Internet at {dtobias@webcom.com}, on Prodigy at {MGFH21A}, or through FidoNet to {Daniel Tobias} on {1:380/7}. My personal World Wide Web page is at {http://www.webcom.com/~~dtobias/}.)
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