Social Bookmarking: The Do's and Don’t's

Social bookmarking is a way for people to store and organize bookmarks of certain web pages on the Internet with help of metadata. Social bookmarking is done by saving your links to particular web pages that you want to remember or perhaps, share with other users. Usually, the bookmarks are public but they can also be saved privately, where it is shared only with specific people. Social bookmarking also requires certain codes of conduct and these should be well observed to have a more meaningful social bookmarking experience.

The Do's Of Social Bookmarking

Follow the golden rule. Treat people the way you want to be treated. This applies mostly for comments. For example, if you are commenting on something that has been submitted by someone who registered few days before, it would really be a nice gesture to welcome them with a few words of encouragement.

It is also important to point out dupes the soonest possible. The sooner they are tracked, the sooner they will be prevented from delaying the promotion to the front page. So once you notice a duplicate story, immediately provide a link directing to the original submission.
It is also nice to be appreciative of dupe-spotters. Having the best interests of the community, it is just right for you to apologize and own up to your mistake. This will let the entire community know that you also put the best interests of the community in mind. You should vote for what is original, cut losses and be sure to submit a new and fresh story at all times.

You should also search the keyword before you submit your story so that you will know if the story you will submit already exists and if the story does exist already, then vote for the original submission. Although sometimes, searching misses out on some stories that are already submitted, it is still worth doing the search in order to prevent getting a reputation of being a dupe-submitter.

The Don’t's Of Social Bookmarking

One important thing to remember about social bookmarking is that you should not submit a story that has already been in queue as it splits the votes between the stories. This will only result to a longer promotion of the story and eventually degrade the efficiency of the system's ability to combine up to date news. Neither should you submit a story that has been removed from queue. Duping a story will only undermine the decisions of the community.
You do not need to comment on the story that you reported. Only the site administrators need to know that you reported a story.

If you want to keep your discussion relevant without having to deal with clutter, then you should not automatically add a signature to your comments or add unrelated links in them.