Back when I was active on Usenet it was considered pretty normal to have house rules for any newsgroup, you were also expected to refrain from posting long enough to notice and learn the unspoken customs (this was called "lurking").
Nowadays people see it as an orchestrated attack against free speech, shout references to 1984, and threaten to move elsewhere.
Yet the ones asking us all to behave politely are called "hypersensitive"?
@jkb
It's just social peer pressure to establish the rules by creating a discourse about acceptability...
Don't forget many people are living their first hands on experience of a federated network.
Rules are then a reassuring thing, knowing them and showing it, means belonging to the in-group in their minds.
@jansegers I think this happens in every social group, offline or online. Sometimes It's more blatant as is the case here because we explicitly discuss these matters, but every group has its own definition of politeness and good manners.
