Social Bookmarking Tips: Try Not Crossing The Line

The Internet is a virtual world, which is basically just another place for people of different sorts to roam around. So, one way or the other, the online community is pretty much a witness to various behaviors from several species of Homo sapiens sitting in front of the computer. While some try to behave properly when they are online, others can’t help but showcase their nastiness via the Internet. After all, they are very well protected with the so-called anonymity, a shield they use to hide themselves and gives them courage to do crappy things online.

Even though it is strongly advised to follow and observe Internet etiquette, or “Netiquette” as others may prefer to call it, this doesn’t entirely wipe out trolls, scammers, black-hat SEO advocates and others from the face of the Internet. So if you are trying to work from home, you should know your limits and the “do’s” and “don’ts” in your everyday activity.

Let’s make an example with social bookmarking. Many of you may not know it but you could be crossing the lines when you are doing social bookmarking and this may have some not-so-good impact on your business reputation as well as your work from home. Perhaps the most common deviance done in social bookmarking sites is the act of submitting a duplicate story. A particular story becomes a mere duplicate if someone else has submitted it already.

Before you can actually submit a story or link, the social bookmarking sites will first try to check if that particular link or story has already been submitted or not. If they find out by searching in their database that there is an existing stuff similar to what you are trying to submit, they will just give you an option to vote for it. That actually gives due respect to the original sender and why the hell would you send another copy of a story or link when it’s already there?

Duplication is a big no-no in social bookmarking etiquette and most social bookmarking tips will tell you not to get involved in that. However, there are still a bunch of individuals who don’t listen and keep doing nasty tricks, cheating social bookmarking sites and making duplicate submissions like it’s an ethical part of their work from home. If you happen to catch these greedy acts, you can help the bookmarking community by reporting them to the site administrators or moderators.

But there are also cases wherein people may have made an honest mistake in submitting a duplicate story and maybe the site experienced errors in checking duplicates at that time. So it’s quite recommended to inform that user first so that he or she will have an idea and can do something about it. This can happen to you too. So if someone pointed out that you did submit a duplicate, apologize for the mistake, be thankful for the warning and take that duplicate submission down right away. And then, next time, try searching your story before submitting.

Aside from the issue about duplicate submission, you can also be crossing the lines in terms of social bookmarking etiquette if you do “comment-spamming” or if you comment without actually reading the story or mislead others by creating story titles and descriptions which are far different from the actual story. These are just some of the “don’ts” that you will learn from various social bookmarking tips online. However, you don’t necessarily have to memorize every “do” or “don’t” because it can all be summed up to the one golden rule not only for social bookmarking but for all the dealings in your work from home and life as well: Do not do unto others what you don’t want others to do unto you.