This diary is actually homework for my GOVT-300 class in which we have to design a webpage or PowerPoint on netiquette, so I have decided to post it on DKos as a service to new users not sure what these terms mean,
Here ya go.
-Nate
Trolling:
A perfect example of trolling can be found on a recent diary on DailyKos, MISS BIG FAKE-BOOBIES, SREBRENICA, IRAQ, AND OJ.
The author of this diary, Matt Janovic regularly publishes diaries on DailyKos a progressive online community with the specific purpose of starting "flame wars" (see definition below).
In this particular diary, the author claims, among other things that
Were it not for the fact that German diplomats recognized these break-away "nations", the calamity would never have occurred. Thanks NATO, you fostered the first act of genocide in the West since WWII.
The purpose of this diary, was not to add to the community discussion or even to express a valid point of view, the purpose was merely to illicit a response and aggravate the community as a whole.
This is against four major points in the diary guidelines for this particular online community, they include, but are not limited to
• Diaries which engage in wild speculation without any proof are strongly discouraged. Repeatedly posting diaries consisting largely or entirely of wild speculation is an abuse of site policy. Bear in mind that that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
• Diaries which contain hateful or defamatory writing are prohibited.
• Diaries which are deliberately designed to inflame are prohibited.
• Deliberately inflammatory titles, or titles which contain attacks, are prohibited. Also, while this site doesn't prohibit profanity, please think very carefully before using any curse words in a diary title.
This author should be banned from DailyKos.
Flaming (and also an example of"impersonation"):
Flaming comes from the term "inflaming", meaning making direct personal attacks on another user usually to leading to a "flam war". Flaming is different than trolling, because flaming can be done by a respected member of the community.
An example of flaming can be seen at the following link on DailyKos
What have you done to help America?
You've just proved our point. Keep it up. But you probably treat everyone else that way.
This was written by the user, Chagnon4Congress purporting to be former Congressional Candidate John Chagnon. This is an example of flaming, as the comment has no substance, is a personal attack, and is clearly inflammatory.
While I cannot prove that this is an example of impersonation, it most likely is. There are two reasons I believe this, first, candidates (even former ones) rarely, if ever, resort to this low level flaming, and more importantly, the authors use the term "our point", not "my" point. This is most likely a former staffer that does not understand netroots support upset that Chagnon did not raise large sums of cash online.
Spamming:
Spamming is the online version of junk mail. It is particularly hard to find spam on the progressive blog communities to which I belong, because trusted members of the community can "troll rate" comments, and administrators can delete inappropriate blogs.
For that reason, I am using an example from an e-mail I received on 2/24/07. It is an advertisement for medications prescribed to treat Erectile Dysfunction. In an unsuccessful attempt to get past spam filters, the e-mail contains a single image hyper-linked to the spammer’s website, to avoid using typed words such as "Viagra". Nowadays though, most spam filters check to see how big a % of an e-mail is HTML coded.
Plagiarism and Copyright violations can go hand in hand. On DailyKos the progressive communities that most examples for this study have been on, both are bannable offenses. This happened to user Gaiaspirit who appears to have copied an entire article from the Washington Post and tried to pass it off as his or her original work in GOP: Stuck in the mud
This user was banned for multiple violations of community standards.