Who cares?
With still over two million hits via a Google search, it might seem that Netizen
remains a popular term. An advanced search constrained by date doesn't really
suggest that usage is on the decline - it's been used about 200,000 times in the
past year, and, quite to my surprise, more than 40,000 in the past month. On the
other hand, it seems to show up only twice over the past six months or more on
a search into my own user history. The Wikipedia entry on the term was created
in January of 2003, though it only seems to have received much attention from
August of that year. And quite frankly, the
present definition there simply seems wrong:
A Netizen (a portmanteau of Internet and citizen ) or cybercitizen is a person actively involved in online communities.
If Wikipedia editing is an accurate measure, few seem particularly interested
in the term. It gets edited at a faucet-drip rate of a couple of times a month,
and those edits are far from major.
The phrase itself is credited to Michael Hauben in his essay (and later book)
The Net and Netizens. At one time
a number of versions of the book seemed to exist, but at the moment only the original,
on a Columbia University server still seems to be there. The first version of
the essay is apparently from 1992, while the present online version was last updated
in 1996. Hauben himself was apparently a classic Netizen - perhaps he was defining
himself when he tried to define the term. He seems, however, to be a tragic example.
After a debilitating traffic accident, and an inability to get proper medical
care, he apparently killed himself in 2001. His
web site (including the book) still exists, as does a
very nice obituary, but a link to a memorial site apparently set up by friends
doesn't seem to be around anymore.
Go to: Bad Netizenship.