Netiquette Issues
In designing a web page, if you want certain normal things from visitors,
you need to follow the etiquette of the net -- the Netiquette. This
essay contains basic material that explains how to rate the "netiquette"
of a site.
If you want people to contact you, proper Netiquette is that you provide them with a way to click on a link that sends you e-mail. High volume sites may impose a filter or response page for e-mail, but should not make it difficult.
The "do nots"
It is acceptable, for a site to
Forms
Many sites attempt to channel all contact into forms. For a high volume site, this can be necessary for your sanity.
However, the use of "mandatory" form fields (areas that have to have text put into them) tends to generate a great deal of irritation and to reduce feedback. (I still remember the site that required all visitors to fill in city, state and country and that bounced the feedback if you did not let them know that Texas was in the USA).
Forms should supplement rather than replace e-mail links. By all means
put the form first, but do not use a form instead. (see
"it is acceptable" above).
Pages on the web commonly link to each other. It is common for a web site to have a collection of links (or several collections, broken down into appropriate groups and types). My site has a number of them, all of which I keep organized in a central Link Index. Because of how easy it is to copy link collections, many sites have the same information (in fact, I keep a collection of legal links available for other lawyers to copy and use on their sites at Legal Resource Links -- with full permission to alter, expand or reduce the material there. If your site needs a link collection, feel free to use the one I provide.
Two very common things happen with links.
First, people will ask to be added to your link collection(s). Adding good sites to your link collection will make the collection more valuable to those who visit your site (though remember, the moment someone uses a link collection they have left your site to pick up information somewhere else).
You will ask people to consider linking to your site. That is one way to obtain more traffic for your site.
Proper Netiquette in this situation is for you to offer to link to any site that you ask to link to you. It is very bad Netiquette to ask someone to link to your site and to (a) not have any links going out from your site, and (b) not link back to their site.
The following is a real e-mail I received that captures perfect Netiquette!
"Hello,
We have visited your site and placed a link to you on our links page. You have done a great job organizing all the resources, and the mediation papers are quite informative and valuable. Thanks for linking us to your site.
Best wishes.
Rey Carr" (To see Rey Carr's site [http://www.islandnet.com/~rcarr/peer.html])
It is also bad Netiquette to clone a list of links without editing it or giving credit (one or the other -- unless the list is provided for that purpose like the one I have on my site). So, I might copy someone's list and put up a mirror (that is the proper name for an unchanged copy of something) that gives credit and links to their site. In that case, I am not hiding whose work it is and I am not attempting to keep traffic from them. In the alternative, I might use someone's list as a place to start thinking about what sites I want to include.
Or, I might borrow a list (like the one offered above) that expressly allows for both copying & editing and that does not request or require credit. For an example of such a list, see Legal Resource Links.
The "do nots"
It is acceptable, for a site to
Truth / Advertising Netiquette
Some sites exist purely as an excuse to charge people for "yellow pages" style listings.
Basically, the site functions as a specialized index or search engine (e.g. Yahoo or InfoSeek or AltaVista) with the hope that while people looking for information are unlikely to visit, lawyers and others will pay to be listed.
Some sites actually provide a useful service, but most are provided in the hopes of degrading the value of search engines and the value of having a home page.
If you charge people for links, you have an obligation to:
This essay is a work in progress ... (but then, everything is on the Internet. Proper netiquette includes not overusing the "work in progress" phrase or "man working" icon -- especially in animated form). For more comments see [key.htm]
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