patndoris TechnoGeek

Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but my mama raised me with manners. I've noticed an alarming lack of manners with a lot of IM contacts lately.

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It starts with the request for an add. I make my Yahoo Messenger address available in a couple of forums and here on my website. If you want an add - great! But tell me who you are and where I'd know you from. Adding people you don't know is how you end up with viruses and other bad things. Just give me a clue why don't you? It's awkward to have to deny a request, or to ask who the heck are you and do I know you? Tell me where you saw my addy and we're golden - I'm here to help - but don't just miraculously think I'll add anyone. If it's someone I've spoken with in voice, if I don't request the add while we are speaking, I will ask if it's ok to add them later. People often find it disconcerting to just get a notification that someone has added them when they may or may not recognize the person.

Maybe I just expect too much, but once someone is on my contact list I kind of expect them to observe the unwritten IM rules. We've all seen the email etiquette rules, but what about the IM ones? They're simple really...pay attention to the status. Of course I'm sure we all have contacts we've told "you can get me anytime." And in those cases we do mean anytime. It's like your best friend who knows she can call you crying at 3am because her boyfriend/husband just had a fight with her. But that does not mean any and every contact has the right to ignore a status.

Online is online - unless the status says otherwise. If the status conflicts with being online and available - I go by the status. If it says busy doing such and such, then I don't expect an immediate answer from someone. And I certainly don't sit there going "are you there?" "where are you?" over and over ad nauseam. I try and if I get no response I figure they'll get back to me if they want to. If it appears they're into something, well then a few short sentences to determine if we'll talk later, or what have you, is normally sufficient. I think people tend to forget that not everyone is available all the time for everything, including lengthy conversations.

If the status is set to busy, I take it to mean just that - BUSY! Busy usually means don't bother me just now. It does not mean wake me up from a nap because you're bored, or this is the first time you've seem me as something other than offline in days so you'll just say hello, nor does it mean now's the time to ask me computer related questions - it means I probably won't answer you just because you ignored my status. In fact, people bugging the heck out of me repeatedly when I have a status that clearly says I'm busy is one of the REASONS I'll appear offline at times. If it's an emergency - of course a simple one time IM is quite sufficient. If/when the person becomes available you can likely expect an answer, but once again, trying over and over isn't likely to help the cause and it's just plain rude in my opinion. I know people who have their messengers on at work - and especially then - busy means busy. Or for a college student - studying may well need to take priority over IM's. It's just good manners to exercise judgement when you think about IM'ing when a person is set to busy.

If someone has a status of away, not at my desk, out to lunch, or even if they appear offline, they might be there and "hiding" or they might really be gone. I've sent and received my fair share of complete one sided conversations in this scenario, but I don't just sit there going "hello, hello are you there, can you hear me now?" An IM sent on one of these statuses should not expect a response in the immediate future. And once again, if the written status message indicates the person is doing something where an IM might not be appreciated - think before sending.

But back to the online status. I can multi-task with the best of them, but if I have a status of say "playing a game of some sort" then most of my internet family & friends know I can and will chat, but I may be slow to answer. Nothing annoys me more than someone going "whatcha doin?" when I've gone quiet. Helloooooo....my status says playing a game - what else do you think I'm doing? I can chat and play, but since one window usually requires the mouse focus I can't be doing 2 things at the very exact same moment. And goodness can you believe it? I might actually need to concentrate on that thing called a game my status says I'm playing. My regular contacts are quite aware and I don't get such silly questions from them, but a few newer contacts just don't seem to get it. And then there's the person who gets all whiney and grumpy when you are either multi-tasking, not paying enough attention to them, or have to go for some reason. Emoticons shedding tears is not the way to my heart - I don't know about yours. And sometimes there are just times when we don't feel like talking. I know it's a novel concept - but it happens. And while for my internet family a "where have you been" is quite fine - I take it as an expression of caring and concern...for some contacts it feels more like an accusation of "you haven't been online for me to monopolize your time lately."

And my most favorite pet peeve of the moment is the one where since I exist in so many different time zones, I must therefore be available all the time. So let's just say...on a weekend morning when most people can tell by my Busy and "Sleeping til who knows when" status that I'm off in dreamland somewhere, I start getting IM's going "wake up sleepyhead - talk to me - I'm bored." busy...Busy...BUSY! WHAT PART OF SLEEPING DID THEY NOT UNDERSTAND???? I hate to be rude to people, but lately this one is just getting no response from me whatsoever.

I love the IM world, I just don't understand why people can't read and pay attention. A status is a means to convey information, both a visual representation by the symbol we choose to use, and the written words to accompany it at times. The rules of etiquette do not get abandoned in the virtual world just because we aren't face to face. There are contacts with whom we bond over time (like the ones I lovingly call my internet "family" - complete with a mama, papa, brothers and sisters) and to some extent these "rules" become more malleable depending on the situation, almost unspokenly so over time. Perhaps it's just that we get a better feeling for the limits with people we become closer to. But for all my other contacts - no matter how much we may have chatted, I go to great lengths to respect status messages, and to save my IM's for an appropriate time if necessary, and I expect them to do the same. If something just can't wait and my contact is busy, I use email rather than interrupt what they may be doing with an IM. What a novel concept eh? Email of all things! Now there's a concept that just may catch on one of these days....

I contemplated an article on this one, but decided the likelihood of anyone actually looking for IM etiquette was so slim I'd just rant and get it out of my system.