Hello folks;
 
As the  Listserv postmaster for  Temple University,  I have been  involved in
popularizing BITnet  and the Internet  here for several  years. I am  also an
avid discussion  group (mostly  Usenet) reader. This  issue of  network abuse
concerns me a lot.
 
Many novice Internet users create chaos on  the Internet due to their lack of
familarity with our "culture".  The best way to deal with  this problem is to
educate these  people on  how the  Internet's services  and culture  work. To
avoid having Temple's new Internet users, misuse the Internet, I just wrote a
little  blurb about  Internet  etiquette  yesterday. While  the  facts in  my
document are  not my  own, I  think I managed  to write  a clear,  yet brief,
statement  about Internet  etiquette. Sure,  companies such  as AOL  might be
guilty of unleashing unitiated people on  the Internet, however, I think many
colleges and universities are also guilty of the same thing.
 
Here at Temple, anyone who wants free Internet access has to fill out a short
account application form. Yesterday, I  started having everyone at Temple who
is  responsible  for  distributing such  forms  to  hand  out  a copy  of  my
netiquette  tips  document  with  each  form  they  give  out.  We  are  also
restructuring our training  workshops to include tips  on Internet etiquette.
Perhaps this will help Temple's Internet users avoid ab sing the Internet and
BITnet. I've never  received any complaints of abuse by  any Temple people. I
am not sure  if my superiors have been  so lucky, but I want  to address this
problem here anyway.
 
One of the  Listserv lists I run  is called Help-Net to  help novice Internet
and BITnet  users learn about  the many  network services available  to them.
Help-Net, during its  4+ years of existense has been  the welcoming point for
thousands  of  new  users  to  the  Internet  culture.  With  that  in  mind,
yesterday, after I finished writing this netiquette document for my Temple, I
also made a  version for Help-Net subscribers. Anyone who  wants this info is
welcome to it  without any copyrights attached  to it.
 
Yes, I  should have done  this a  long time ago,  but the idea  simply didn't
ocurr to  me until  yesterday. In  any event, feel  free to  use it  for your
local Internet users if you want to. I  am also going to get in the habbit of
sending these  etiquette tips  to anyone I  see who could  use the  info. For
example, if I see someone post one of those damned David Rhodes chain letters
again on  Usenet, I  will forward  a copy  of my  netiqette statement  to the
person who posted that junk.
 
This document is available on each  of Help-Net's three document archives. To
get the  file from  Temple's Listserv,  just send  the command  SEND NETIQUET
INFOHN to [log in to unmask] or  to [log in to unmask] Its also available
via Gopher on  Temple's Gopher which is  called cronkite.ocis.temple.edu. Its
in the "Computer  Resources and Information" folder under  Help-Net where its
called "Internet Etiquette Tips". For those  folks who aren't lucky enough to
have  a Gopher  client available  locally, you  will also  find this  info on
Temple's  anonymous  ftp  server  which   is  called  ftp.temple.edu  in  the
pub/info/help-net subdirectory under netiquette.infohn.
 
Any comments  you may have  about this document are  welcome. Just send  me a
private E-mail message.
 
 
  Stan  Horwitz  Internet: [log in to unmask]  Bitnet:  STAN@TEMPLEVM
  Temple University  -- Senior  Consultant (My  views are  all mine!)
  Manager of the Help-Net and Suggest lists and Listserv Postmaster.