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25 March 2009

Necromancing, Bumping and Generally Wondering What All the Fuss is About

Netiquette rules indicate that, when posting to a chat room, an old thread should be presented with much pomp and circumstance, if at all.

A few months into my Internet initiation, I learned to "Bump".
It is a polite way of reintroducing a topic that has been lying fallow on the site for some time and that may, or may not, be dead.

The only way to find out if a thread it truly old hat is to bump it and to see what happens.
It is a practice that rarely goes un-noticed and today capital letters were used to indicate a certain displeasure by one poster who wondered at the value of trying to recussitate a topic that did not seem to hold much interest for them in the first place.

I have to admit I find all this bowing and scraping to people one will never meet a bit rich.

I find myself wondering about who thinks up the rules...
and even more intriguing, why so many people have internalised them so rigidly.

Perhaps this thought process is a hang over from years spent teaching and realising that any group dynamic has layers of interaction that are virtually imperceptible.

Until something unexpected happens, that is, and many forces, often unconscious and based on firmly held beliefs that seem to come from nowhere, emerge to find an often vigorous expression.

People are passionate.

I certainly shall think twice before "bumping " again soon...

But could this be a subtle erosion of freedom of speech?

2 Comments:

Blogger David T. Macknet said...

Bump away - people are a bit too full of themselves, particularly those who are out there "correcting the internet." See this comic and you'll get the idea of the person who's out there, complaining about your netiquette.

Unless you're schizophrenic or something (and segregate your "nice" persona onto the blogs I can find), I just can't see anything you write actually being rude - just misinterpreted.

3/25/2009 3:42 pm  
Blogger Tales from the Birch Wood. said...

Thank you for such an entertaining link.

As for being misinterpretated, many times I have heard the reference to Hiberno-English which is made to console visitors to Ireland who are confused by the layers of meaning that this language provides.

"Do not be taken in by the fact that they (the Irish) seem to be speaking English."

To produce any sort of persona in cyberspace, or so it seems after several years effort, shows remarkable skill in anybody.

As you suggest, let's keep trying.

3/25/2009 6:31 pm  

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