|
Expected Preparations:
|
||||
|
|
||||
| Keywords: Etiquette for the Internet and for this course | ||||
|
|
||||
|
Objectives:
|
Outcomes:
|
|||
|
|
||||
|
Deliverables: Time management: Before you begin, estimate how long it will take you to complete this unit. Then, record in your course journal: the number of hours you estimated, the number of hours you worked on the unit, and the amount of time that passed between start and completion of this unit. Journal: Document your progress in your Course Journal. Some tasks may ask you to include specific items in your journal. Don’t overlook these. Insights: If you find something particularly noteworthy about this unit, make a note in your insights! page.
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Evaluation: NA: This unit is not evaluated for course marks. |
||||
Netiquette is a portmanteau of “network etiquette”. It is a collection of social conventions for communication on the Internet such as e-mail, mailing lists, forums … Here is a subset of relevance for our courses and workshops.
Note: This page is written from the perspective of using a mailing list, but the guidelines apply in spirit to using the Quercus Discussion board.
This is the single most important rule. We are all working together. Let’s all make this a pleasant and exciting experience.
If you use “reply”, your message will go the entire list. Pause a moment, and consider whether this is what you want. Perhaps your message is of interest to only a single recipient? Or your message may be personal, or confidential …
Spend a moment thinking what your post is about, then condense the message into a few words. This goes a long way towards
Try to be specific. For example, this subject line is poor:
ChimeraX doesn't work!
Much better would be
Can't load molecule in ChimeraX after editing coordinates
If you must change the subject line, quote the old line as in:
New subject (was: old subject)
If you have a new question, never simply write it into the reply to an older thread. This is called “Thread Hijacking” and it is rude and ineffective and it will cause me to have a poor opinion of your manners. If you hijack a thread:
Use your mail-client’s reply function if you contribute to a thread, write a new mail or post if you have something new to add. 1
As a corollary: if your post is related to the thread, by all means do use the reply function of your mail client and don’t change the subject line, even if you think the original subject line was not well written or contained a (non-critical) typo etc.
From time to time I see questions asked that have already been answered previously. This shows me that you did not follow the discussion. What do you think I think of that?
Exactly.
Sometimes your problems will be due to a faulty assumption, sometimes due to incompatible software, sometimes due to bugs, or errors in assigned tasks … The more clearly you describe what you did and what happened, the more likely it is someone will be able to help. Simply stating “this or that didn’t work” will get you nowhere. Ask yourself:
Almost always when I see a screenshot of errors that arise during assignments, the issue would have been better described by copy/pasting code and text. Screenshots, as images, are a dead-ends for further analysis.
In all those cases, you prevent others from helping you quickly and effectively and you are wrong to expect others to type down the contents of your images because you didn’t copy/paste the essential material. That’s not smart. Also you are wasting other’s bandwidth on their computers or mobile devices. That’s rude.
The only case where screenshots are encouraged is where an image is
involved - but even then, for example when discussing R plots, the code
that has generated the plot would be more helpful. dput()
is your friend. And learn to create MWEs (Minimal
Working Examples).
“Hasty-sounding questions get hasty answers, or none at all. The more you do to demonstrate having put thought and effort into solving your problem before seeking help, the more likely you are to actually get help. […]
Never assume you are entitled to an answer. […] You will earn an answer, if you earn it, by asking a substantial, interesting, and thought-provoking question - one that implicitly contributes to the experience of the community rather than merely passively demanding knowledge from others.”
I can’t put it any better.
Using UPPERCASE ONLY IS THE TYPOGRAPHIC EQUIVALENT OF SHOUTING; this is appropriate only under exceptional circumstances. some people use lowercase only. are they too lazy to find the caps key?
It also looks lik u cant rly b botherd 2 rite if u rite ur txt with textN shorth&. But then, why should we?
Just don’t do it(W), oK?
Also remember: trolling, stalking, impersonating etc. may fall under sanctionable offences of the University’s Student Code of Conduct.
Sending a message to the list reaches all list members. That’s the
point of the list: we are sharing discussions with everyone. There is no
need to address anyone in particular (not even your professor), unless
you are responding publicly to a specific statement by that person. Even
generic salutations - like Howdy or Dear all,
are nowadays usually omitted for the sake of brevity.
Once the problem has been solved, there is no need to thank contributors - but don’t just walk away, you are not done! It is very important to share feedback whether the advice received has worked or not, or if something else worked instead. People helping you on a mailing list don’t expect a reward except for one thing: the little satisfaction that their effort was actually helpful. Don’t deny that, that would be rude.
A separate reason to resolving such threads is that they are archived, and when others are looking for their solution they need to be able to tell whether there is hope to be found here.
Zachary has run into an issue when downloading an R package. He posts a screenshot of his computer in the mailing list to ask what could have gone wrong. Good or bad?
Amadeus has been following a discussion on the mailing list about Zachary’s problem. That reminds him that he wasn’t sure how to find a package that contains a particular function. He replies to Zachary’s thread and asks his question. Good or bad?
Kaila responds to a post I have made, about some subtleties in identifying homologous sequences by sequence alignment. She is in a hurry and doesn’t address me by name in her post. Good or bad?
Dall’Olio,
Giovanni M et al.. (2011). “Ten simple rules for getting
help from online scientific communities”. Plos Computational
Biology 7(9):e1002202 .
[PMID: 21980280]
[DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002202]
If in doubt, ask! If anything about this contents is not clear to you, do not proceed but ask for clarification. If you have ideas about how to make this material better, let’s hear them. We are aiming to compile a list of FAQs for all learning units, and your contributions will count towards your participation marks.
Improve this page! If you have questions or comments, please post them on the Quercus Discussion board with a subject line that includes the name of the unit.
[END]
Some mailing list software builds threads by subject line and some software builds threads by message ID. Only changing the subject line may not be sufficient to start a new thread. Since you usually don’t know which does what, use the rule above to be sure.↩︎