The principle
Netiquette is nothing more than ordinary courtesy transposed to a place where you cannot see the other person's face. That is the whole difficulty: with no tone of voice, no glance, no visible hesitation, a short sentence reads as curt, a joke reads as an attack, and a silence reads as rejection. The person on the other side is an adult, a teenager or an elderly person, a few miles away or eight thousand, and they read you exactly as you read them — through a screen.
The rule fits in one line: write what you would be willing to say out loud, in front of witnesses. Everything else follows from that.
Rules that apply everywhere
- Say hello when you arrive and when you leave. In a group room a general greeting is enough, followed by a word to the people you know. Coming in silently and then addressing one person directly makes everyone uncomfortable.
- Don't type in capitals. It reads as shouting whether or not you meant to shout. Loud colours and fonts have the same effect: they make the room harder to read for everyone else.
- Don't repeat yourself. Posting the same line again because nobody answered within a minute is the first step toward flooding — rapid repeated messages that drown out other conversations. Wait: in a room several exchanges run in parallel.
- No threats, no harassment, no insults. Racist, sectarian or hateful remarks have no place, and this is not merely a house rule: in most countries such remarks are criminal offences, including when made behind a nickname.
- No advertising and no pasting of commercial links: that is what turns a living room into a spam box.
- Respect the language of the room. This is not an identity requirement but a condition of moderation: a moderator cannot arbitrate what they cannot read.
What you should never post
Two pieces of information have no place in a public room, for very concrete reasons.
- Your email address. Bots crawl chat rooms to build mailing lists; an address posted once turns up in those lists for years.
- A phone number, yours or anyone else's. Posting someone else's number amounts to harassment in most legal systems. Posting your own exposes you to calls you will not be able to stop. A number is given in private, to someone you have verified exists.
Add to that your address, your workplace, your children's school and photographs that show them: pieced together, these locate you. On this, see romance scams.
What moderators are for
A well-run room is moderated, and moderators can disconnect or ban. That power sometimes surprises people; it is the condition for the room remaining usable. Three useful points: moderation is not an arbitration between two versions of events, it protects the shared space; a moderator who steps in is not judging you personally; and a decision is contested through the channel provided — contact form or email — never by complaining publicly in the room, which makes things worse every single time.
If someone makes you uncomfortable, the sequence is simple: do not reply, block, report, and keep a screenshot with the date. Replying is what the person is fishing for.
Moving from the room to private messages
A private message changes the nature of the exchange: nobody else can see what is said. That is what you want when the conversation becomes personal, and it is also what manipulators rely on. A few markers: ask before switching to private rather than opening a window unannounced; keep the same tone you used in public; and be wary of anyone pressing to leave the platform quickly for a messaging app where nothing is moderated or traceable. That is the opening move of almost every romance scam.
Audio and video
Many rooms now offer audio and video calls directly in the browser. It is a good way to check that someone is who they claim to be — and a moment when you reveal more than you think. Before accepting: look at what your camera shows behind you, keep the microphone off until you are ready, and understand that a call can be recorded without your knowledge. Never undress on camera for someone you have never met: video blackmail is an industrialised fraud, and it always begins with a very warm call.
When the tone turns
You are under no obligation to stay polite with someone who is not — but you have every interest in not replying. An exchange of insults puts you in the same category as the other person in the moderator's eyes, and erases the one thing that matters in a report: that you have nothing to answer for.