I am sure that a mainstream Skype etiquette will emerge soon, but one of my most disliked Skype things is seeing someone online, dropping them a quick hello, and there is no response and suddenly they change their status to AWAY or NOT AVAILABLE or they just go offline. My view is that ONLINE means your connection is available for contact, and if you don't want to be disturbed, you should change your status.
If I say 'hello" to someone who is online, and they come back and say 'in a meeting' or 'busy, later' I am not offended because that is the nature of instant messaging. But no response and changing the status ... well for me that's the IM equivalent of being ignored in a face to face meeting when you say 'hello' and they walk right by without a word.
The Loose Wire Blog of journalist Jeremy Wagstaff seems to have had a similar problem and the Ken Thompson on his Bumble Bee blog refers to something his team call polITE - polite intrusive technologies etiquette, which is interesting. (As an aside, Ken's blog is a great one to just browse through if you are interested in bioteams ... team dynamics, virtual collaboration, emerging technology and bioteaming. RSS FEED.) Wonder what other people think?
If I say 'hello" to someone who is online, and they come back and say 'in a meeting' or 'busy, later' I am not offended because that is the nature of instant messaging. But no response and changing the status ... well for me that's the IM equivalent of being ignored in a face to face meeting when you say 'hello' and they walk right by without a word.
The Loose Wire Blog of journalist Jeremy Wagstaff seems to have had a similar problem and the Ken Thompson on his Bumble Bee blog refers to something his team call polITE - polite intrusive technologies etiquette, which is interesting. (As an aside, Ken's blog is a great one to just browse through if you are interested in bioteams ... team dynamics, virtual collaboration, emerging technology and bioteaming. RSS FEED.) Wonder what other people think?
UPDATE: This post helped the folk at the SHARP END TRAINING blog write a post about Skype Etiquette.
4 comments:
I totally agree with you!! I was just thinking this same thing when someone did this to me again - they are online and then you come on and just happen to say hello and they change their status.
I don't think that skype etiquette has evolved as quickly as everyone thought?
I suppose that clicking your status to away/busy when someone comes online who you don't want to speak to is the same as mouthing
"I'm not in" when someone rings up on the (real) phone. (Come on we've all done it)
Anyway - you gave us food for thought and we developed a rough skype/msn etiquette at The Sharp End Training Blog
I can see your point. However, the fact that somebody's status is shown as being on-line doesn't necessarily mean that they are actually on-line.
IOW, this isn't so much an issue of etiquette (or lack thereof) but rather an issue of technical shortcomings of the system.
I have done some testing and the status of buddies is not necessarily updated reliably. Especially in the case of people who allowed their computer to "sleep".
Basically I'm saying that you shouldn't take this personally as it's more then likely that you're not being ignored but rather you're trying to reach somebody who was on-line but really isn't there anymore. Despite what Skype may tell you.
As heb said, it does not necessarily mean that they changed to away or N/A status after you messaged them.
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