I was just perusing RFC 1855, possibly one of the earliest guides to netiquette that you’re likely to find still readily available, and thought I’d share a few exerpts:

In the past, the population of people using the Internet had “grown up” with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the nature of the transport and the protocols. Today, the community of Internet users includes people who are new to the environment. These “Newbies” are unfamiliar with the culture and don’t need to know about transport and protocols.

RFC 1855 was released by the IETF in October 1995. For anyone who’s enough of a newbie not to know what that means, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is the body that comes up with the standards and protocols that the Internet runs on. For instance, if you’re in the mood, you could read how HTTP works or about the format for sending email. The standards documents are known as “Requests For Comment” even after they’re published and accepted. I don’t think anyone really knows why.

Of course, the irony of the IETF releasing a Netiquette document for newbies is that the newbies aren’t likely to be reading RFCs.

Anyway, on with the show.

Here’s something I wish was still in force:

Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one.

(emphasis mine.)

Some wishful thinking on using “talk” programs:

Use mixed case and proper punctuation, as though you were typing a letter or sending mail.

And some advice on mailing lists and newsgroups more honoured in the breach than the observance:

Read both mailing lists and newsgroups for one to two months before you post anything. This helps you to get an understanding of the culture of the group.

The thing that interests me is that there are aspects of netiquette which are hot topics now but which weren’t even addressed in the RFC. I’m thinking of top-posting, here. Remember that Windows ‘95 was released in August 1995, and that — if I recall correctly — the early version of Outlook that came with it was where the top-posting abomination began. It seems the IETF hadn’t realised, in October of that year, what an issue it was going to be.

When it comes to ancient netiquette guidelines, one of my favourites is for short, plain sigfiles. I must admit I wince whenever I receive an multi-coloured HTML one from a certain family member, and dislike it even more when a workplace forces me to use such a thing (luckily, this happens rarely in my field.)

It’s interesting that the IETF don’t seem to have taken up the challengee of writing a more up to date netiquette guide. I imagine that the Internet simply has too many communities and ways of communicating to make it possible to do so in a single document any more.