[...] Where’s my ‘dislike’ facebook button already?…  Wikinomics [...]

It is a lot harder to write a response that does not sound aggressive than when you are face to face and that person can hear your tone of voice and see your expressions.

I will respond if it is very objectionable but I am very careful which battles I choose to fight. I also know my friends well enough to know how they will respond.

If it is someone I have not seen in years and am not sure I sometimes leave it alone rather than start a public battle that will be on the permanent record.

Jeff, facebook was originally created to show yourself to the public. You have to admit to be public there. If disliked, delete your account. What is the problem?
Privacy tools? It is not for facebook!
:):)

Call me old fashioned but I long for the return of conversational politeness. Just because you are an anonymous person online does not give you the right to say ridiculous things without consequence. Yelp has had their share of lawsuits because of this matter. There should be parity between individuals and corporations.

[...] Already a couple of Wikinomics readers have used this new feature to leave some feedback (on an earlier post of mine, no [...]

I consider anything posted to a facebook profile that is visible to everyone on your friends list to be essentially public. Just because it’s not accessible to everyone on earth, doesn’t mean it’s not in the public realm. It’s sort of the same as if someone were in a social club, and made a loud proclamation that hundreds of other club members could hear. Sure, people on the street outside may be oblivious or unable to access the comments, but i don’t think anyone would claim the comments were “private” in a room with hundreds of people, unless it was made explicitly so, and everyone agreed to that.

As far as arguing with someone goes, i had a situation where someone on my FB friends list posted what i felt was a fairly offensive ultra-left-wing comment about Canada on CANADA DAY (comparing canada to fascist countries) and I called her out on it. I wasn’t particularly offensive, i just told her that she had it pretty damned good here as a middle-class uni student who doesn’t pay much tuition, that canada is a human rights leader, etc. Her response was that her status updates were private and i shouldn’t go on her facebook if i didn’t like her politics. Given that her status update showed up (unwanted and unasked for) in hundreds of people’s newsfeeds, including my own, I responded that it wasn’t private. I stand by that. We are no longer FB friends.

I think the best practices are just the usual general rules for a debate. Be courteous, try to give your opponent’s comments the most charitable interpretation you reasonably can, and use logic and reasons, rather than rhetoric and invective.