Copied and edited from The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette - by Arlene Rinaldi; edited by John Achrazoglou
I. General E-mail Guidelines
Avoid typing mail messages all in upper case (Typically considered SHOUTING!)
Check E-mail daily and remain within your limited disk quota. Delete unwanted messages immediately since they take up disk storage.
Never assume that your E-mail can be read by no one except yourself; others may be able to read or access your mail. Never send or keep anything that you would not mind seeing on the evening news.
II. Internet Etiquette Rules
Rule 1: Remember the human
Apply the golden rule: Do unto others as you'd have others do unto you. Imagine how you'd feel if you were in the other person's shoes. Stand up for yourself, but try not to hurt people's feelings.
Another reason not to be offensive on-line... When you communicate through cyberspace -- via e-mail or on discussion groups -- your words are written. And chances are they're stored somewhere where you have no control over them. In other words, there's a good chance they can come back to haunt you.
Rule 2: Make yourself look good on-line
Be pleasant and polite. Don't use offensive language, and don't be confrontational for the sake of confrontation.
Q. Is swearing acceptable on the net?
A. Only in those areas where sewage is considered an art form, e.g., the USENET newsgroup alt.tasteless. Usually, if you feel that cursing in some form is required, it's preferable to use the classic asterisk filler -- for example, s***.
Rule 3: Share expert knowledge
Finally, after all that negativity, some positive advice. The strength of cyberspace is in its numbers. The reason asking questions on-line works is that a lot of knowledgeable people are reading the questions. And if even a few of them offer intelligent answers, the sum total of world knowledge increases. The Internet itself was founded and grew because scientists wanted to share information. Don't be afraid to share what you know.
Rule 4: Help keep flame wars under control
"Flaming" is what people do when they express a strongly held opinion without holding back any emotion. Does Netiquette forbid flaming? Not at all. Flaming is a long-standing network tradition. The recipients of flames sometimes deserve the heat.
But Netiquette does forbid the perpetuation of flame wars -- series of angry letters, most of them from two or three people directed toward each other, that can dominate the tone and destroy the camaraderie of a discussion group. They're an unfair monopolization of bandwidth.
Rule 5: Be forgiving of other people's mistakes
Everyone was a network newbie once. So when someone makes a mistake -- whether it's a spelling error or a spelling flame, a stupid question or an unnecessarily long answer -- be kind about it. If you do decide to inform someone of a mistake, point it out politely, and preferably by private e-mail rather than in public.