Like most people here, I strive to type perfectly. Maybe because it’s I took horribly unproductive, yet informative typing class in high school, but I’ve always typed properly. Typing properly has always been the way I typed. I punctuate, I capitalize, and I type things out fully. Hell, one thing I do is I avoid using numbers sometimes; instead, I type the word out, exactly like how I did in this sentence. It’s one instead of 1. The only thing I can’t get out of the bad habit of, is to leave off a sentence with (…). Anyway, even though I type properly all the time, and everyone who has come in contact with me knows I type properly all the time, they still think it’s weird when I say this: Capitalization of a name is a sign of respect. I always make sure to capitalize names. (Actually, not all names because I leave screen names as they are. I think leaving a screen name as it is, is more respectful than changing it.) So, when I don’t respect someone, I usually don’t capitalize. Example: Joe called me, and after that I talked to bob. See, I respect Joe, but not bob, but no one ever gets this. And when I point it out, people just look at me funny and say “What the hell…?”
I consider bolding usernames to be a sign of respect. If I’m being sarcastic or chastising and I don’t bold your name, it’s because I don’t think you deserve it. Any other time and I simply forgot.
I totally understand. My best friend does the same thing, 7 up yours. He’s my ex-boyfriend and he hates all my other ex-boyfriends, so he never capitalises their names. Hee.
(As an aside, I don’t like when people capitalise rinni. Gosh, if I write you a whole email, perfectly capitalised, and sign it “rinni”, why would you write back “Hey Rinni!”? No real underlying reason for this, I just think Rinni looks weird.)
My first social interaction with the internet came about after I had been using it for several years. I started to frequent an IRC channel which catered to a specific interest, trading pictures of women in bondage. I noticed a trend in the usernames, specifically that the tops capitalized the first letter of their nickname and the subs used lowercase. Switches use whichever they felt like at the time. You can still see this when you surf the net and come across people using Y/you as a pronoun and using i instead of I. To them capitalization is all about respect.
Therefore I will always do my best to capitalize just like the owner of the nickname. I will ever capitalize corporate or porduct names just like you see the company do.
Here on SDMB I have seen people using bold for usernames, which I took as a way to emphasize that they were referring to a specific poster. I never really saw it as a respect thing. But then again I don’t see how wearing a suit implies respect for the people you deal with so I could be mistaken.
I’ve never actually taken the time to “think out” the respect/don’t respect concept. Rather, I’d have just thought when you didn’t capitalize Bob it was either a typo or a thinko.
Perhaps I missed the point of the OP then.