I’m your host, Kirrily Robert, often called Skud, and I’ll be posting articles on etiquette for geeks.

No, seriously.

And don’t tell me it’s not needed. Just look around you.

So why Geek Etiquette? What’s special about us?

The vast majority of your basic etiquette book — Emily Post or what have you — is of no use whatsoever to most of us. I don’t care what a fish-fork is used for, or how to address a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury — at least, not in practical terms; my capacity for useless trivia is nigh infinite. But practically speaking, what about the etiquette of software forks, or how to address a room full of OSCON attendees?

I’ve got a shelf full of etiquette books at home, mostly because I find them quaint and amusing, and also because I’m interested in history and I find them a fascinating way to look at life in different eras. The earliest one I’ve got is Caxton’s Book of Curtesye from around 1500 (not an original edition, I’m afraid; and yes, that’s printing press Caxton); my favourite is Sheldon’s Twentieth Century Etiquette (publ. 1901) in which the author rants that people who walk five abreast on the pavement should be locked up in little pens where they cannot inconvenience the public. I am, if I may say so, an etiquette book geek.

And in all those books of etiquette, here’s what I’ve found in the way of common ground:

1. Bodily functions are gross, mmkay?
2. Be considerate to other people and they’ll think better of you.
3. Lots of random stuff you’ll never, ever need to know (until you do).

The first two are pretty much universal. Caxton’s book, five hundred years old, tells you not to eat with your mouth open, just like I was taught when I was a kid. Almost every single book starts out with a quick intro on the subject of “do unto others”.

The third point, though, is where most etiquette books are bloody useless. Honestly, I’ve never encountered a fishfork (or an Archbishop) in my life. Those rules and guidelines are specific to certain cultures, and the majority of etiquette books aim at the conservative upper classes or those who aspire to join them. This is changing slowly — the most recent Emily Post has a sidebar on mosh pit etiquette, for example — but I’ve yet to find a good etiquette book that deals with the issues found in high tech business environments, the open source community, tech conferences, or online forums.

Apart from the minutiae, it’s time we noticed that there’s an entire geek culture that operates on a completely different level to the rest of the world. We communicate differently, we have different values, we just don’t work the same as other people a lot of the time. It’s not that we’re rude — it’s that we are operating on a different system of etiquette. Manners within geek culture are completely different to the rest of the world, and there are a bunch of interesting things that happen along the edges of our culture when we try to deal with those outside. If you’ve ever been in a marketing-vs-engineering war, you know exactly what I mean.

So, here we are. Geek etiquette. Seriously.

Feel free to email me questions if you have them, or comment here, and I’ll respond.