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After over a decade on-line, I'm no longer enthusiastic when a friend decides to head onto the Internet for the first time. It invariably means a barrage of e-mails I end up deleting, albeit not without twinges of guilt over essentially ignoring a person who is my friend in "real life," even though they suddenly become burdens when they get a modem!
Eventually, I end up trying to explain the concept of "e-mail etiquette" to them. This doesn't always go over well, but a few analogies help: when you're teaching children to use the telephone, you don't just hand it over and let them call half-way around the world to learn to dial, and you don't subject your friends to several minutes of confusion when they call and the little one is trying to figure out what to do now that the phone has been answered. E-mail has its own set of rules, just as with any other form of communication.
One of the most common offenses is that which is forwarded. I've learned to dread anything that arrives as a mass-mailed forward: endless jokes I've already heard, "top ten" lists I've already read, and on and on. For more seasoned Internet users, these just serve as clutter, and for people who use their net connections to work, it's a real time-waster. Just as you would request permission to put somebody on a mailing list, you should ask permission if you can't resist sending out jokes and other impersonal e-mails to people you know. Don't assume that just because you haven't heard any complaints, everything's okay - you mean well, and it shows, so there's a great deal of reluctance on the part of the recipient to tell you not to forward items!
There's also a more basic problem with people not taking the time to learn how to use their e-mail software. This, unfortunately, frequently ties into the above: when one person sends out a mass mailing, one person's reply often goes to every single person who got the original mail, not just the original sender. When you hit "reply," make sure it's a personal reply: check the "cc" (carbon copy) line.
Most of this involves the same root problem, of course: e-mail "clutter." The biggest e-mail offenses, like "spam," involve doing things that serve little purpose other than to add yet another thing to be deleted to the user's mailbox. E-mail boxes can overflow just like real ones, too: the net effect of receiving mass amounts of mail is that the user may reach their quota, and legitimate messages will simply "bounce" and not reach the recipient. (This might help explain why some people get so angry at those long lists or gag pictures you've been forwarding!)
Beware becoming a "spammer" yourself. You probably associate this term with unscrupulous businesses, sending out thousands of junk e-mails from a bogus address. Still, the same terms apply to people who send out chain letters, no matter how well-intentioned, or those "send the first person on the list a dollar…" get-rich-quick scams. Nobody enjoys receiving a chain letter, and the latter is (despite the disclaimers made by the original crooks) illegal. Similarly, don't be fooled by Internet hoaxes: warnings of non-existent computer viruses constantly make the rounds of the net, and the warning of the virus is the only virus there is! There are several reputable web sites that can be found with any search engine that de-bunk these "warnings" and will tell you whether or not the cautions are legitimate.
On a more personal note, remember that e-mail is not unlike regular mail in that you can't take it back: don't send things in a moment of spite that you may regret later. Similarly, take some care with e-mail, especially to people who aren't close friends: use proper spelling, punctuation and the like. E-mail isn't an excuse to forget the rules of regular writing, and you risk having your hard-to-read messages go ignored. The Internet has a lot of little rules peculiar to itself, such as the idea that USING ALL CAPITALS means you are "shouting," so it's best to err on the side of caution and conservative messages until you're comfortable with the medium.
Though there is a steep learning curve with e-mail, it's not really that hard - and a short period of diligence will brand you as a seasoned expert in no time. Hopefully, the cautions you might take with e-mail initially will pay off, in the form of people eagerly anticipating any mail with your name attached to it!
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