In reply to:

I have observed that there seem to be certain rules and conventions regulating an observed etiquette or certain usages. I have further noted that contributors sometimes (rather ungraciously , it seems to me)publicly chide one another for alleged breaches in the unknown code of decorum.... please advise:
1. Where(if at all)are any such rules collected and how may one gain access to them? Purely as a matter of idle curiosity, who makes,and who enforces, such rules, and by what authority?
2. Where is the phrase-book translating such acro-breviations as "IOW" and "YART"

scribbler, by now your head will be spinning, what with all the information you have received in response to your plea. and all of this information is tres excellente, particularly the yeomanlike(!) efforts of jmh in the information forum.

so now I will endeavor to answer your (so-far) unanswered questions.

1. if you think the folks here are ungracious in their criticisms, you perhaps haven't frequented many online BBSs (bulletin board systems). we are the very models of modern civility compared to most of these.

2. as someone alluded to above, and this is a definite YART - rules? we don' need no stinkin' rules! it's just that some of us have been here for almost 12 months now (since the Maculate Inception last March) and we like to try to keep things the Way They Were When We Found Them (so to speak). so, to quote someone else, pay little attention to the man behind the curtain -- cuz mostly he isn't there.

3. we have made abortive attempts from time to time to keep *this forum (Q & A about words) to be just that. things did get a wee bit testy when a legitimate question about food words digressed into a several hundred post thread including recipes and branched off into folk's favorite things to imbibe. [see Martha Stewart web sites]

4. re acronyms - many of us hate their general overuse, myself included; but I have yet to adequately explain myself for "YART"....

5. emoticons - many of us hate them, but they seem to be required since many others miss the facial expressions that are a part of communicating one-to-one. this has recently been taken to great extremes!! [shrugs-resignedly-emoticon]

6. "IOW"?? I have *no* idea what that one is -- must be from one of the threads that I don't frequent.

7. another way of quoting, which I don't think was mentioned (probably because few like it), is to use {quote} and {/quote} [in square brackets] as I did....

HTH!! *<8-)

                 Enigma and evasion grow;
                 And shall we never find Thee out?
                      - Herman Melville, Carel