Legal Research

Etiquette Traps, And How To Avoid Them

Yesterday Michael Smerconish published a column about Facebook.  He’s skeptical about its value.  According to Michael, “Texting is for chicks, Facebook is for teens, and nobody is going to convince me otherwise.”

Hmm … interesting perspective.  What really grabbed my attention was his article’s subtitle:

“More than 120 million have joined, many too old for this nonsense.  Whatever value it could have is trumped by the etiquette traps it sets.”

This brought to mind a really interesting etiquette trap I read about recently concerning another social networking site, MySpace.  A Millersville student failed her student-teaching assignment because of unprofessionalism.  Part of the problem was that she placed some thinly-veiled criticism of her supervisor, along with at least one compromising photo, on her MySpace page.  When the high school at which she was teaching asked her to not return, she failed the student-teaching portion of her curriculum.  Thus, she was ineligible for a teaching degree.  Millersville arranged for her to receive a BA in English instead.  She graduated, but sued to receive a teaching degree.  The judge ruled in favor of Millersville.

So what can we learn from this etiquette trap?

(a) Never speak ill of others.

(b) If for some reason you cannot control yourself with regard to (a), do not put your rant on your MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn/whatever page.

(c) Ditto compromising pictures of yourself with captions such as “drunken pirate”.

(d) If for some reason you cannot control yourself with regard to (a), (b), or (c) above, please ensure that only people you trust can see it.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on December 08, 2008 (boomark / email).