the next asshole who utters 'meme' in my presence is getting shot.

it's the people who do it. Blogging is 99% verbal diarrhea (or diarrhoea, as the Brits call it), it's lame-ass crap from people like Manjoo who can't cut it writing real articles.

I'm a Geezer Geek and proud of it! I remember when computers were buildings. You walked into the Computing Center and there it was. The tractor feed printer was larger than your current desk with all your equipment on it.

"Netiquette" is still a valid term, though use of the concept is sadly lacking. With power comes responsibility, but some people are still stuck on the Jr. High playground. I don't care what you call it, you should be guided by a few simple courtesies.

On the other hand, I always thought "blogosphere" was a kludge, and a "blog" was basically an apa with significantly faster response time. Sure, there are words that bug me (such as the misuse of the otherwise terrific concept "meme", as mentioned by the first letter), but there are non-geeky words that bug me too, like describing Bush as "resolute".

Language changes and the Young Whippersnappers have a lingo unto themselves, and are subsequently annoyed when the next crop of whippersnappers develops their own argot.

Me? I still get to define "the internet" for my non-techie friends. Perhaps my greatest skill is translating Geek to English and English to Geek. I'm not constrained by popularity, only by clarity.

Crisps

Eye Candy

Netiquette

Moist

Brain fart

Clusterfuck

Bakersfield

Truly a b.s. poll. What the heck is a folksonomy? I'm getting older, sure, but I know what a LOLrus is and I've never heard of folksonomy.

Once you hear Todd Rundgren's Onomatopoeia, you will love the word as well

In the very newsletter that brought me to "Tech Week in Review," two lines down I find:

The Blog Report

Your guide to the political blogosphere....

And I agree with the Baron (and disagree with the world): what's so wrong with "netiquette"? Perhaps since etiquette of any kind has been thrown out the window, the offensive are offended by the suggestion of manners of any sort.

I work at an online high school and netiquette is not only in the student (and teacher) orientation, but the students are graded on it whenever they do collaborative work.

I like it personally. I think it rolls off the tongue nicely, but honestly I couldn't care less what you call manners and etiquette. I'm just a big believer in the idea that a little politeness makes the world happy.

It's a user-determined taxonomy, and any geek who specializes in information science should use it with the same lack of fear they use when speaking of wikis, skip lists, taxons, polytomies, or tagging. People not steeped in the field may wince, but isn't it normal for jargon to be off-putting to those outside the field?

There's a difference, I think, in the attitudes we may hold toward different terms. Origin and usage should be relevant. There are:

• Terms developed within a field to meet a specific need (folksonomy)
• Terms developed outside a field to make it accessible to those who may make use of its services, but who are not developing within it (netiquette)
• Terms originating and still used within the field as jokes, but which are used outside the field seriously (blogosphere).
• Terms with specific scientific meaning, but which are also associated with a more popular definition. Memes, for example, have a specific evolutional meaning, but are also used to refer to the frequently irritating but sometimes entertaining quizzes that are passed around between bloggers.

But what else are we supposed to call a blog? Seriously, I don't know. Anyone?

A diary? A personal website?

"Netiquette" is an artificial word, like "emoticon". One gets the feeling these words are coined by journalists, instead of actual users. Not every word is going to enter the popular lexicon, but there are reasons words do or don't. Namely, if there's already a word for something, people won't use the new one, but if there's not, then they will. "Netiquette" has not caught on because we already have a perfectly good word ("etiquette") that we can use. "Etiquette" applies in all kinds of contexts, and online is just one such context: you can still talk about proper etiquette when online without creating a new word for it. Not to mention it just sounds dumb.

Words that do catch on do so because they fill a need - a "blog" is a new thing, and we needed a word for it. Some are people's personal "online journals" and we could call them that, but some aren't. Some (like War Room or Machinist) are more like "news feeds", or commentary "feeds", and some (like Broadsheet or like Daily Kos) are like communities where multiple different people can post. They serve all these different functions, and yet there's clearly a commonality between them. What is it? Well, they're all "blogs". The word has a purpose. Unlike "emoticons" which were already called "smileys" or "netiquette" which is already called "etiquette" or just "being polite", with "blogs" there was a need for a new word, so it came into wide usage. That's also why "e-mail" and "cybersex" survive (these were new things that needed names) but "e-quaintance" and "cyberfeminism" and other such monstrosities don't. (Ease of pronunciation also comes into play, for instance, "smileys" is a lot easier to say than "emoticons".)

While not a tech term per se, "uber" in front of any word needs to be retired (forever); see Mr. Manjoo's blog post on MySpace and FaceBook where he describes both as "uber-popular". Of course, maybe I'm missing a subtle ironic commentary on anyone who creates a page in either social network site. Next, let's ban "wunder". Both make for the most trite writing and conversation.

I would; however, welcome the return of capitalization. if in the realm of (n)etiquette, typing in all capital letters is akin to shouting, is all lower-case like i'm whispering?