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.
