h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I remember, many years ago, when I first got into comms, and I made my first online friends. We were all users of 42 BBS (we're talking pre-internet here, or at least when the net wasn't in major public use), and I ended up chatting with a few other people about things like computers, aliens, and films. Ah - how I used to look forward to our little conversations... Oh, sorry - I'm losing focus.

Anyway, as the years passed, we carried on talking and all got to know each other quite well. Even when 42 BBS closed, we found somewhere else to meet online, and kept in contact. Over the years, I kind of drifted away slightly (due in part to a "rather large" set of phonebills), but kept in contact with one of the guys, Rob. Years on, and we're still exchanging weekly emails, about whatever's on our minds, and asking each others advice. Though we've never actually met in person (due to living in totally different places in the country), I still consider him a very good friend. My point being that you can meet some really great people on the net...

Of course, there's always a negative side (or at least, I can normally find one ). A few years ago, my (at the time) girlfriend got involved in online chatting, and dumped me for some guy who she'd met in a chatroom. Which was nice... but I'm not bitter... Well, OK, I admit that I was at the time, but who wouldn't be

OK, now for some relevant advice instead of personal ramblings :

Req's handy hints for making friends on the net:

1) The most important one: NEVER arrange to meet someone on your own - always get a friend to go with you (just incase the person you're meeting turns out to be a psycho - OK, so it's not that likely, but better safe than sorry). Oh - and always choose a busy public place to meet (rather than a dark back alley), just incase they turn nasty (again, not likely, but it's better to be safe).
2) Don't give out any personal details until you've known the person for a while, and you trust them. My personal way of thinking is "Don't give out your address, unless you want a letterbomb" (I apply this rule to anyone - not just people on the net). A little extreme, but you get the idea. I'm starting to sound a bit paranoid, aren't I?
3) People never look like the picture they email you
4) Jumping into a conversation you know nothing about and slagging everyone off is NOT a good way to get people to like you. It's not something you see on h2g2, but it's amazing how many people in newsgroups forget that!


Right - this post is getting much larger than I was intending, so I'll stop there for the time being. Feel free to laugh at my over-cautious, paranoid suggestions - but remember: just because you're not paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you!


Cheers,
Req

Don't worry - they're perfectly non-paranoid in my opinion.

Getting to know people in the net is a bit of a sticky subject at times - I would suggest lurking a bit before joining in, just to see how interactions work, get to know the personalities of the frequent posters and what kind of post on your part is likely to be well-received. Here on h2g2 we're a much friendlier lot of course - but it's still good manners to read at least the last page or two of a long forum before posting in it, I think. Then you get an idea of what's been said and all that. Helps you look more intelligent as well

As for meeting people in person after communicating over the net, that's something I've only done twice:

1) the h2g2 birthday meetup, which was in a very public place
2) a person I'd been e-mail for several months

Both went very well indeed, but then the second had an advantage that I was able to meet him at his work (which just so happened to be a rather large police station) so getting murdered/attacked wasn't exactly high on my list of worries for that. But I have several other friends I've never met in person and probably never will. They're no less friends for all of that.

Privacy... never give out address/phone/suchlike anywhere even remotely public. I must admit I'm freer with my uni address than home (which I'm very unfree with) because of the way mail and visitors are received in Halls. And I don't have a phone anyway, so...

Something else I find to be polite is writing proper English (or whatever other language). Using lots of the becoming-more-common abbreviations strikes me as very inconsidered. Okay, so some people can't type very fast. But if they have lots of practise they can only get faster, can't they?

U mean stuff like this that just makes people LOL? I hate it too, but I'm forced to use it on MSN Messenger because otherwise people get annoyed at my slow typing.

As for lurking in forums to see how people respond to eachother, I've been a part of H2G2 for months now and I still don't feel completely integrated on the conversational side of things. I think it's probably because I've been out of the UK for a few years and so a lot of the references are unfamiliar to me. Living in the UAE makes me a bit isolated from everyone else and I don't think it allows me to communicate with people on H2G2 in the same way I'd be able to if I lived in a similar 'real world' environment. If that makes sense...

So I think there's more to getting along with people online than how you behave. It's very cynical of me but I suspect that where you come from and where you live play a fair part too. It has to if you're going to relate with people.

You may think otherwise of course...

It does - it can do - but it doesn't _have_ to. However, anywhere there's a strong local culture people not from that locality are going to feel a bit left out, I agree. It's a shame, really, but inevitable in many ways.

Any ideas for what can be done about it?

Hmmm...Not really I'm afraid.

I'm sure that as the societies of the world become more integrated it will become less of a problem. But for the moment it's just something that *is* - online and in the real world. Although I do think that in an online society such as H2G2 it isn't such a big deal. 99% of the people here are intelligent enough not to be prejudiced or go into conversations with *too* many preconcieved ideas. Everyone's bound to have some.

I do believe that the net is the best tool the world has at the moment for bringing down barriers.

I agree - the net is very useful and H2G2 makes the best possible use of it.

And as a fellow expat I am amazed that you find the references "local" - there must be one or two threads _only_ in the whole of "Ask the H2G2 Community" that I have ignored because I had no idea what they were about. Everything else seemed to be on a general enough topic, at least just something from the news - to which you as an internet user have access. Even if you don't have "Big Brother" in UAE (the mind boggles!) .

My experience has been quite the opposite - it has given me a chance to renew contact with all the things I miss - and believe me, after 26 years you still miss a lot.

The Internet has the potential to cause the most profound social change in history I think. It'll change the way we think about the world (it already has, but will do it more so I think). When you can use the internet to call anyone in the world for the same price as a local call (or cheaper - or free!) then nowhere will seem as far away anymore. Especially when we're all videoconferencing in our homes over broadband.

And the closer we come towards that reality, the more 'netiquette' will become exactly the same as normal etiquette, one suspects...

Well it is similar to normal etiquette at the moment, just adapted for use in a different medium. People get it wrong because they don't think. IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS THAT TYPING ALL IN CAPITAL LETTERS IS A BAD THING from the first time someone sees it done because it really does look quite, quite atrocious. Things like that. Of course it might take people a little while to work out what emoticons are - although not here of course

My cousine (sp?) persists in e-mailing me *entirely in capitals*! Any idea how annoying that is? The way I see it, if you wouldn't do it with snail mail, don't do it with e-mail.

Letter writing is actually quite a good yardstick I suppose. People don't generally complain about the way letters are written (I'm talking style-wise here, not content-wise) so maybe if we adopt the same techniques for e-mail we wouldn't get so many misunderstandings.

As for chat rooms and forums, I'm not sure the same could apply there - basically because of their spontaniety. Is there a pre-internet medium which can be equated to forums?

I can imagine how annoying that is. What about people in chatrooms who speak in capitals _all_the_time_? How annoying is that?

Example:

MaW> No, that won't work.
Irritating Person> YES IT WILL
MaW> Why?
Irritating Person> IF U LOOK AT THE SOURCE U'LL SEE

Se how irritating that is? Do you think people use it as an excuse for not capitalising their sentances properly? I'd far rather they typed all in lower case to be honest. Of course, that dialogue is not any particular thing beyond what just randomly popped into my head.

Using upper case for everything seems very old fashioned to me. Like in the days of telex, when there was only one case.

Trillian, you've surprised me, I didn't think you were old enough to remember Telex!! I agree with the thought that if you treat postings e-mails etc as snail mail or notes it does read better. It goes without saying that personal abuse etc are a big no no.

Using upper case only is a lot more old fashioned than telex! The romans started it - that's why capital letters are called 'roman capitals', we use the same caps as they did. I can't remember which civilization it was that devised lower case but somehow we in Europe came to use a combination of the two.

I suppose there must have been a good reason for it, so why change things now...?

Actually I used to be quite adept at reading the punched tape! What a waste of talent!

es modestly

Oh fellow Murray code reader... that made me all nostalgic for my Army days! (can't tell you why we had to read the tape though....) But didn't you find the telex annoying, we used a strange system where we typed straight to line (I don't know if this is Army speak or not, tell me if you don't understand!) and if you went too slow it dropped out. Then the techies used to get really annoyed with the ham fisted (male) soldiers (in their defence, the keys were sometimes very close together). But I liked the sentence ending thing (k) and at the end of a conversation (ar) - I miss it on the instant messenger thing.