Crusade for Class Acts on the Web
Gloriana’s highly opinionated and slightly wry views on netiquette and internet addiction
Your personal Web site
- Please do not begin your page by telling your readers how dreadful it is. The essence
of education is leading others to use their own reasoning, and be assured that they shall
shortly discover the fact you happily neglected to mention.
- Remember, once upon a time, when every personal letter seemed to begin with the
inane words: “Just a short note to tell you...”. Recall that, as we near the third millennium,
the new inanity is, “Hi, my name is Jay. I am nineteen, 5’6”, blonde hair...” Come, now,
there must be things on your mind more important than that!
- If what was referenced in the previous paragraph truly is the most important
thing on your mind, please do not compose a Web page until you find a topic more
fascinating. (Yes, I know that such a page is exactly what one would produce using the template that came with your "intro to HTML" program...)
- Much as it grieves me to tell you this, your personal details probably are not a hot
topic on the international market. A web site devoted to these will only cause grief to those
who, while doing a net search for “Milton”, find their screens filled with pages composed
by those who enjoy Milton Bradley games or have their drinks at Milton’s Place.
- A few personal details are a nice touch, provided that you are referring to interests.
My own scanty details exist mainly to allow links to sites on the topics that interest me.
However, remember that anyone who really wants to know more about you is always free
to send an E-mail. (Now, think a moment - has anyone ever done that? Tells you
something, doesn’t it?)
- Any page that has the flavour of “I’m Alice Goodytwoshoes, and I’ve always been
the smartest girl in my class”, or "I'm Joe Cool, and I'm a real
hunk", will be interesting only to its author. Your family album will at least have six people interested (if both sets of grandparents are alive.)
- If the main point of your page is “hire me” or “marry me”...at least word it
discreetly.
- Being more lenient than many, I shall permit you to place an “under construction”
sign towards the end of your page, provided that the message is that more material
is shortly forthcoming. However, I shall share a message that everyone who has ever
written a doctoral dissertation painfully comes to learn: nothing is ever
complete.
- I love animated GIF files just as much as you do - but use them sparingly! They take forever to download, and have a way of making it impossible to easily access your links.
- Inappropriate though they would be for my site, I, too, enjoy
psychedelic backgrounds. However, innate candour forces me to admit that they
make the text impossible to read. (Not, as with this pet background of mine, merely a
challenge.)
- Humour is a wonderful area to pursue, and I spend many a late night using search
engines to find jokes. But please do not include any of the stale jokes about Bill Gates at the pearly
gates or the Sisters of Mercy house of prostitution! Three million copies of those jokes are
quite enough for one Web.
- The English language is extremely rich, and you will find perhaps 100,000 words in
any unabridged dictionary. Ire
need not be expressed by references to the excretory system. (Many of your readers will be of a generation when a certain word that now is used to
express the idea that something is unpleasant or poor was absolutely unprintable.)
- Express any views you wish - including the religious and political - as long as you do
not speak with scorn or hatred of those who disagree. But do not be apologetic about
having views others may not share! For example, if you wish to express a religious
viewpoint, there is no need to hedge and qualify because an atheist may read your words.
Any mature individual respects others’ points of view. Those who do not are not worth
worrying about.
- Half a million pages feature Web Wizard’s favourite links. Find some favourites of your own.
- It really is annoying to find what appears to be a search of the site...and ends up
being a link to Yahoo. Word things clearly. (Personally, I don't know why any page really needs to be linked to the major search engines ... everyone already uses them!)
- I know that there is a theory that creating "small pages that load really fast" (as one of my critics put it)
are best. I disagree. I really dislike accessing sites where several of the pages say "now click here", or words
to that effect, and nothing else! I'd far rather have a page take a minute to load than to spend far longer
watching the interminable "contacting host...".
- Aren't the "site fights" getting really boring?
- Think of whatever topics are most “popular” now. Then discard them as ideas for
your site because, much as no one cares to admit this, they are the most overworked,
boring topics on record.
- We all know that you know how to use . Please do not demonstrate this
facility.
- Unless you are genuinely proficient in Java, please refrain from practising on line.
- Have you had nightmares about being trapped in a cell and unable to find your way
out? This is the direct result of spending too much time in frames.
- I am extremely proud of my awards, too. Nonetheless, considering the time it takes
for these graphics to download, be merciful and place them on a separate page, to be
accessed only by those sincerely interested. (The only reason
others look at awards pages is to see where they can apply for some for their own
site.)
- Speaking of awards...please don’t subject your readers to waiting ten minutes for
your page to download, only to find that it contains a photo of your current love, suitable
for framing.
- There is a new theory now that the page which downloads fastest is the winner - that graphics should be avoided, backgrounds white, text black. This may hold if you are writing instructions for how to install a modem. Otherwise, don't sacrifice the beauty. (You don't need the award from the people who base their criteria on speed alone.)
- If you have nothing more to say on a topic, and no personal interpretation, beyond
what someone else already created, add a link, not a paraphrase....but there
is little more irritating than a site that contains only links.
- Place the counter at the bottom of the page. Some counters take forever to load, then register "busy".
Meanwhile, the reader has hit the Stop button and begun searching another site. No one really cares where he has stood in the line for the honour of perusing your site.
- One last word on counters - don't be cute! Be clever, by all means, but don't say that "Mr Counter says that..." It makes one think that you place "Mr Black Dot" at the end of your sentences.
Special notes for commercial sites!
- If you will not be able to update the information regularly,
please do not include pages that are useless without regular updates! It will not inspire your customers' confidence
when the site they load for product information was last
updated two years ago.
- Shopping online can be wonderful ... However, this is
not universal!
Don't provide "shopping carts" unless you can guarantee service.
- Never inform your customers of the new online site if
all they will find there is a main page that links to other
pages that bear construction signs only! A useless site is worse than none at all.
Guest books
- Yes, we all know the primary reason that readers sign them....but the
owner of the site is looking for affirmation, enjoyment, or suggestions for improvements
when he reads your entries. (That last does not include such comments as "your page is ****").Please make some friendly or helpful comment before
proceeding to add the link to your own site.
- Leaving obscene, cruel, or disgusting comments tells the
entire Internet community that you are a horse’s ass.
- Don’t be hurt when only 1% of your
readers accept your invitation to sign. Some guestbook servers allow those attempting to
sign to read “Paradise Lost”, place four coats of lacquer on their fingernails, and drink two
pots of Earl Grey before the page loads. Even the efficient ones (like mine) tend to be
flooded when everyone returns from work and logs on to the Internet.
Mailing Lists
- Trust me - people who join a mailing list genuinely want to discuss the list’s topic.
Consider their emphasis. Those who subscribe to a list about television
comedy want to have relaxation and entertainment, not hear about breast cancer
awareness. Those on Shakespeare lists are not interested in your thoughts about whether
you and your boyfriend should live together. Unless the list is a “support group” (and
many fine ones are), spare the other readers your tales of woe. You are not the list's topic of discussion.
- Never, never, never post that absurd urban legend about the Neiman Marcus cookies!
(Yes, even though the recipe is excellent.)
- Should you join a list that is a support group, respect that, in revealing details of their
personal problems, the writers are becoming very vulnerable. Read the message, in full,
before you respond. Otherwise, you will find yourself telling a battered wife to join an
exercise class - someone who has severe depression that you don’t let things bother
you - someone whose child just died that he needs to have a physical exam - someone in
severe financial difficulties that you have an herbal cure.
- If your intention is to be a pest or create trouble, you are far too immature for
discussion lists - and that holds even if you are 94. Spare the other members the costs of
downloading annoying messages that they will only delete.
- Amateur psychology is boring, irritating, and dangerous. Don’t look for
reasons to ask others on the list whether they had conflicts with their mothers just because
they express a negative opinion about a writer who happens to be female.
- No one forced you to join a mailing list! You are free to unsubscribe. It is
not at all funny or original to make comments such as “doesn’t anyone
else out there have to earn a living?” on a high volume list. (That line shows a depth of
intelligence and creativity equivalent to that of one who says, “Hot enough for you?”, or
tells someone with a hacking cough, “You sound good.”)
- Don't send the list a request to vote for you in site fights.
Everyone already has fifty such requests, most from people he's
never heard of, in his inbox on any given day.
Signs of internet addiction
Yes, I too am a member of this set. I knew this, without qualification, when I dreamt that
my cat crept out from under a chair, followed by elves and tiny blue unicorns. I awakened
wondering how I would explain their presence to the neighbours...what I would feed
them...whether I would be liable if the elves stole someone’s television set.
As another proud internet addict, I know of only one solution. Spend at least one night
each week at the library...making notes for topics to add to your Web site.
- You are looking at a beautiful painting in an art museum...and your right hand
automatically reaches for an invisible mouse.
- You have dreams of futile net searches or of images that are exact duplicates of a
freeware game.
- You write a letter of gratitude or condolence, and find you’ve listed your URL and
e-mail address under your signature.
- You are watching a video of “Gone with the Wind”, and find yourself thinking of
“adjust colour balance.” (Photoimpact is also addictive.)
- You are driving through a busy intersection, thinking of new links to add to your site.
- You find 370 messages in your E-mailbox, and cannot remember which are
from which list.
- You spend three hours "surfing", just
looking for where you can apply for new awards.
- Your mind wanders, during a concert or church service, to what new
MIDI files you can place on your pages.
- You become angry when you download a program that ends up
being shareware, though you’ve warned others for years that there is “no such thing as a
free lunch.”
- Your mind is weaving Java programs when you are supposed to be preparing
financial statements.
- Your keyboard is loaded with crumbs and coffee stains, because you now
take your meals in front of the monitor.
- You are writing a letter or report on your word processor, and end every paragraph with a P enclosed in brackets.
- Your site receives an award, and you have a choice of four
graphics to advertise the fact. You download and post all four, hoping no one notices that
they all are links to the same site.
- On top of all the other components of your mid-life crisis, you feel despondent that,
having used search engines day and night, you cannot find any topic that another
member of the Internet community (population: ten million or so) hasn’t already
discussed.
© 1996 by Elizabeth G. Melillo, Ph.D.
E-mail: gloriana@oocities.com
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." - C.S. Lewis