Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Blogs, Google docs, etc; electronic communication is no longer restricted to merely SMS and email. The new communication channels are used by millions to reach out to millions more. However, many of these millions make this communication more bothersome by not observing some basic rules of online communication, such as conciseness, information density, privacy and punctuation. Unless certain rules of engagement are observed, meaningful communication may get lost in the tidal wave of spam and idle chit chat that is awash on the Internet.
Conciseness or brevity: Whether it is a blog, email or any other kind of electronic message, it is important that your text is not too long. A rule of thumb is that online readers lose their concentration after 100 words, so if you cannot come to the point within the first sentences of your message, consider starting the message with an introductory summary, as in the case of this blog post, and relate the details in subsequent paragraphs. It will allow readers to judge quickly if further reading is warranted.
Information density: This refers to coming to the point and sticking to it. In online communication, when the communicating parties are remote from each other, it is quite important to supply your counterparts with the information they require, starting already from the title or subject line of your message. Case in point would be the communication with the administrators of online services. One has to consider that administrators and support staff receive many messages per day. You may be looking at a problem that is obvious to you, but it will be unknown to the persons that you ask for help. Therefore, in such communication, you must make sure to include detailed information as to the nature of the problem (i.e. what exactly does not work and what have you done), the location of the problem (e.g. in which part of which Moodle course it occurs) and the identity of the people whom the problem affects. The subject line, if any, of your message should already signal what it is about. Just a polite salutation which does not identify the problem tends to get overlooked on an RSS list or in an email inbox.
Privacy and discretion: Electronic communication tends to be, or can easily become, public, vulnerable as it is to interception or misdirection. It should therefore contain as little private information as possible. Even when blogging about personal experiences one should retain a certain distance to the subject matter and avoid identifying private individuals. One ought, in other words, to separate between private and matter-of-fact work-related communication. Case in point, when addressing support services of your organisation, you should use the communication channels of that organisation and not your private email, which may not be identifiable to the people you wish to reach, and you should not lose yourself in well-meant but irrelevant chatter.
Punctuation and structure: The great popularity of short message communication as in SMS and Twitter has led to the adoption, for this genre of communication, of a simplified orthography and abandonment of punctuation and paragraph structure. As all teachers will have experienced, this sloppy use of language tends more and more to spill over into official and work-related communication. However, what will do for low importance communication in Twitter, will become a handicap when contacting support services about a problem you would like to see solved, let alone when creating text for an online encyclopaedia or one of the other semi-permanent information sources which abound on Web 2.
Summing up, serious electronic communication, in so far as it concerns text, should observe certain rules if it is to be effective. These rules include being concise and to-the point, supplying the addressee with all information needed without obfuscating the matter with private concerns and retaining as much structure and punctuation as the communication channel will allow.