Proper keywording is the least observed, in my experience. Most users just don't put keywords on their content, which makes it invisible to the Fanpop search, and also results in a much higher likelihood of repeat postings.

Harold has a good point. But honestly, I think one important piece is grammar.

Some people use a lot of chatspeak - u no, typn lyk dis, rite?

It's okay to make a typo or two. But not everyone here has English as their first language. And besides, when you post something. You should take time for it. It's not a race to see who posts faster, or how few characters you type. And it doesn't save that much time.

Hi, how are you doing today?

Took me 5 seconds to type that.

Hi, hw r u doin 2day?

Took me 4.5 seconds to type that.

See?

This is not in any way an excuse, but (perhaps) an explanation: some people don't know how to spell. So while "r u gona wach da show?" clearly has a big chat influence, "gona" and "wach" may just be ignorance.

They're not all that easy to spot, either. It doesn't simplify matters that there are variant spellings for many words depending on your country. For example, Cammie, bless her, was very tolerant of my feedback on a spot she created. To be frank, I made a pest of myself in suggesting that she correct the spelling of "collectable" in her spot. Here in the US, "collectable" isn't a word (and Fanpop, being a site created in the US, underlines it as a mis-spelling) - the word here is "collectible" (the premise is that anything is able to be collected, but only some things are considered collectibles). But after I sent the annoying message, I did some research and discovered, voila! "Collectable" is correct in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (I don't know about South Africa or other English-speaking countries, though I suspect it would be correct there, too), and so I had to apologize, admitting the error of my ways. In the meantime, however, she had renamed the spot to avoid the whole question of which spelling was correct, which was superb. Similar issues I've seen come up on the site: "spelt" is an acceptable conjugation of "to spell" (past tense) in the UK, but in the US, it's a kind of grain used an alternative to wheat, primarily (in my experience) in noodles. I've seen a bunch of users from the US take exception or make wry comments about some UK user's use of the word.

In any case, if it wasn't obvious, I agree with you. Chat speak only makes sense in two ways - that is, it seems to me that there's no point to using chat speak except in two situations:

* typing text messages on a mobile device (where the actual letter input is laborious)
* actually engaging in online chat, where multiple participants are typing messages simultaneously, so if you take a quarter second longer to type, the message you're responding to will have already scrolled up off the top of the screen.

My peers and I all learned to touch type doing chat on bulletin board systems back in the 80s. It's not very good for learning letter accuracy, but it does wonders for one's typing speed. While I never got faster than 70 WPM, my friends who did more chat than me all type at above 90 WPM (a couple - the Chat Masters who did online chat every night - typed at well over 100). Except for a brief period where I had to use AIM for work back in 2000, I haven't done chat since before the WWW protocol was developed, so I don't type anything like that fast anymore. I'm probably down to a word a second (60 WPM) when I try to type fast.

Whoa - that was a big tangent, huh? "Who's that, derailing the conversation once again?" "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "No, it's Tangent man!"

I forgot to clarify. Typos and misspellings, or in some cases, other spellings, are fine. It's the chatspeak that gets me. I used chatspeak back when I used to play World of Warcraft, when during battles you had to get the word out fast or be killed.

Danananananana TANGENT MAN! ;D

The placing of images [even though I'm guilty of it]. Tons and tons of images are placed into the 'photo' category when almost all of them should be in the 'Fan art' category. It didn't bug me until I actually wanted to just look at photos for something, and all I found was art unless I wanted to sift through tons of pages. I think Fanpoppers should more properly categorize their images when they upload.

I have to agree w/ ToastedRabbits. I personally am rather lazy. I try to take as little time as possible when uploading images. But I try my hardest to sort them into correct catagories.
I have to say that rating things is the least observed ettiquite. Sure, you see something you like, but why won't you rate it?

At the moment I mostly feel frustrated by users who will not react when something is pointed out to them. In the example you gave, Harold, this particular user just changed the name to avoid further confusion which is great. I've had that experience, too. But those are the users who care for this site anyway and are actually grateful when you point out an error/typo/wrong keywords.
But mostly it's the same 10 users agreeing on the same 10 subjects and the rest of the fanpoppers ( I have no idea how many regular users fanpop has),well the majority just ignores theses issues completely.
We have great soapboxes on this site and a group of users who try to change this situation but it just seems pointless.
fanpop is like high school! we need more rules!