Ever had someone ask you what you do when you get home after work and giving you that look when you say you would go on the net and check your blog, your forum, your mails and your chats? Ever had people give you strange looks when you tell them your hobby is making webpages and going online for games, discussions and debates? It's as if there is something wrong with wanting to spend your free time on the intenet. When I tell people that what I like to do after work is to go home and r...

Little Jack was crossing the bridge the other day and there was a troll under it. He noticed the sign said, “Don’t feed the Troll” by the side of the road and thought to himself, now who would do something foolish like that? As trolls are, the nasty dirty horrible troll under the bridge spotted him and called out to the boy, “Hey you! You with the ugly face! Where you get that shirt? Did your mummy got it for you at the little’s girl’s shop? I got your mother!” and he laughed loudly. Li...

One assumes that you have the best of intentions to begin with... 1) If you are new to a website, community, blog or forum, be sure to read the FAQ and rules first. 2) Read everything properly and thoroughly before responding. 3) If you don't want to risk a nasty response, don't post anything at all. 4) Never put more than 3 exclamation marks in a post. If all your sentences end with exclaimation marks, it makes you look like spam. 5) Don't laugh at your own jokes. Avoid en...

It's the internet and we can all lie about our age. But can your posts tell others how old you are? Or does it say more about your maturity level. I think it's more the latter. Game forums notorious for having kiddie posters. We call them kiddies, I suspect, not necessarily because they are kids but that they behave like kids. Bad rap for real kids, considering there are many kids and young forumers who are civilised, well mannered and thoughtful with their posts. Some kids don't know how...

It seems to me that in internet forums, people with thousands of posts seem to be able to get away with anything, yet a newbie who brings up even an innocent topic could get flamed to bits. It never fails to urk me when I see a new person joined up only to be bullied by so called "highly respected long time regulars / members". Sometimes, a newbie can't ask a simple question without being severely flamed for not using the search function or being told, "I'm sick of all you newbies p...