Ancient Web: Virginia Shea’s Netiquette Rules Taught Modem Users Manners

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

The early Internet had plenty of people eager to explain TCP/IP. Virginia Shea wanted to explain why you should not be rude to the person on the other side of it.

Read the surviving Core Rules of Netiquette.

Shea's book Netiquette appeared in 1994 from Albion Books. Its ten core rules covered familiar problems: remember that the other user is human, respect people's time and bandwidth, behave online as you would offline, avoid escalating flame wars, protect privacy, and forgive newcomers' mistakes.

These were not retrospective lessons invented after social media arrived. A September/October 1994 Educom Review excerpt discusses modem subscribers, email, Usenet discussions, and messages that could be copied or forwarded beyond their intended recipients. The examples are specific to the early network, but the social problem is familiar.

Rules that traveled by the network they described

The queued Albion Books Core Rules page could not be retrieved reliably during this review. Fortunately, a contemporary Usenet posting by publisher Seth Ross preserves a longer excerpt dated August 31, 1994. It includes publication details for Shea's book and an invitation to subscribe to a Netiquette mailing list.

That combination is unusually useful evidence of circulation. It shows the advice being shared online at the time, not simply remembered years later. An earlier brief posting likewise introduced the rules to subscribers on the day the publisher said the book was released.

The advice assumes a world in which people learn a discussion group's habits by reading before posting, where bandwidth is a shared resource, and where a mail message may outlive its author's intention. It also recognizes that some users have more technical or social power than others and should exercise restraint.

Nobody had to invent bad manners for the Internet. The technology merely gave old behaviors new reach and a much larger audience.

The original Albion URL remains part of this history, but the readable contemporary copies are the dependable way in.

Read Shea's 1994 magazine excerpt and the archived Usenet text.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.