Most of us are taught manners by our parents when they were raising us. With any luck, most of us were taught these basics and know to be courteous when dealing with others in any medium. However, there are some who the anonymity of the computer screen seems to change their personalities or perhaps they just don’t know how to communicate effectively in text. It’s hard to tell which it is at times so it is a good idea to give others the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise.
When playing online bingo, the main place that we will need to exercise our good manners will be within the bingo chat rooms as that is where you interact with both the chat moderator and the other bingo players. You not only need to know how to treat other people and what’s expected of you, but you also need to know the right way to deal with others who may seem rude or unfriendly.
While in the chat rooms, you should always be polite and respectful of other roomies. It’s always a good idea to lurk for a bit when entering a new room to get a feel for the behavior there. Each chat room will have a different atmosphere and what may be appropriate in one room won’t be in another. For example, you may find one room that the people are being flirty with each other but that would be frowned on in a different bingo chat room.
Don’t use all capital letters as online that is akin to yelling at people. It’s also very hard to read on the computer screen. You should not be using profanity under any circumstances nor make offensive comments towards any race, gender, etc., as you don’t know who else is in there.
When you feel like someone else is being rude, step back for a minute before jumping all over them. Tones, joking and the like do not always come across the way they were intended in text so before getting angry, at least think about the possiblity that it was not intended to be rude. When someone is out of line, report it to the CM if necessary but otherwise ignore the rude person and let the CM handle it – that’s part of her job.
