I hate documents about netiquette. No matter how many I read, they always sound elitist and designed with the sole goal of worrying about form over content. Tenets like "don't ask to ask, just ask" and "thou shall set up mailing lists so that the Reply-to header goes to the sender of a particular message" annoy me to no end for one reason: they do nothing-absolutely nothing-to further the ultimate goal of every community: to inform and to help. All they do is to punish the newcomer not because he or she doesn't have anything useful to contribute, but because they are not aware of a set of arbitrary rules that set the "veterans" apart.
He continues on talking about how arbitrary "netequette" really is, but, despite that, that there are still a certain set of base standards that any and every 'net user should consider. His list is as follows:
- Respect others
- Post where posts belong
- Ask only as a last resort
- Verbosity beats lack of information any day
- Answer only if you have something to add
