I have found quite the opposite. Most of his gripes would be easily fixed by matching his usage of the software to his issues/requirements for them, and about half of it either barely sensical whining or a desire to fundamentally change 90% of the human population (which is not going to happen).
The goal of a post on etiquette, IS to change the behavior of others.
As much as i dislike Arrington, he's absolutely correct on this. And as the comment above notes, this is just as applicable for communication on IRC as it is for Skype (well save for the video bit).
As Arrington's posts are applicable to basically every IM protocol, i'm confused as to how you think Arrington's (and my) "gripes would be easily fixed by matching [...] usage [...] to [the] issues/requirements for them".
This is basically a spam filtering problem, and you're blaming the guy getting spammed.
> This is basically a spam filtering problem, and you're blaming the guy getting spammed.
Only the gripe displayed in the video (and #2 on his list) is a spam issue, and it's trivially fixed by disabling auditory alerts, which are not only generally useless but systematically annoying.
Let's check the other ones:
> It’s not a conversation until both sides are engaged.
Maybe it's not a conversation at all, and just an RFI or whatever. Furthermore, if you're not available set your status to one that matches instead of marking yourself as available at all time.
You can even default your status to "Not Available" or "Do Not Disturb". That way, people won't assume you're available... which is what you're saying by using the "Available" status.
Waiting for a SYN/ACK on IMs is entirely useless and highly counter-productive, you can ACK when you reply. In fact it's very annoying because I'm out taking a shit and instead of asking whatever you need and going on with your life as I come back and reply, you're either waiting in front of your screen for my ACK, or you're gone doing something else and by the time you come back I've ACKed and then I'm gone again, resetting the whole process.
If you want to converse, use VOIP.
> Don’t just jump right into a phone call. It’s polite to send a chat message first saying “online? time for a quick Skype call?” It’s annoying when the Skype phone starts ringing randomly.
it doesn't ring randomly, it rings when somebody calls, because they have something to tell you in person. Don't want to answer the call? Then don't
> And all I wanted was a little bit of quiet.
See again, use your status already, if you're not available say you aren't.
> Video calls are not a God given right. Just because you want to do video right now doesn’t mean I want to.
Settings > Video > Show that I have video to > no one.
> Don’t assume confidentiality.
That has nothing to etiquette, it only has to do with not being retarded.
Why not "if you want to converse, go visit them"? Most of the time when I want to converse, I want to use text rather than deal with all the baggage of audio and trying to manage social context -- context which is mostly absent in text.
If you could hit a button and be at their doorstep, the vast majority of reasons to chat rather than going to visit them would still apply, though, right? Going to visit someone has a major overhead, socially. A quarter hour of conversation, at the least, before you can politely get to the subject of the visit, etc. Phone conversations have some of the same costs to a lesser degree: it's quite rude not to devote your full attention to the call (or appear to do so), and there might well still be a few minutes of overhead. With IM, you can almost just start talking. It cuts through all the extra junk around actually having the interesting part of the conversation with a person, but you can still have an actual conversation (even while you both do other things as the other person types), which is important for discussing things at length.
Basically, I would say that calling and texting have very different social costs, but calling and visiting are much closer that way, and that this is why it's almost always better to text than call, even for extended conversations.
Comments
Should really be 'IM Etiquette', this has happened to me, and I'm sure many others, in other IM networks as well.
He hits the nail on the head on the rest of the article though.
I have found quite the opposite. Most of his gripes would be easily fixed by matching his usage of the software to his issues/requirements for them, and about half of it either barely sensical whining or a desire to fundamentally change 90% of the human population (which is not going to happen).
The goal of a post on etiquette, IS to change the behavior of others.
As much as i dislike Arrington, he's absolutely correct on this. And as the comment above notes, this is just as applicable for communication on IRC as it is for Skype (well save for the video bit).
As Arrington's posts are applicable to basically every IM protocol, i'm confused as to how you think Arrington's (and my) "gripes would be easily fixed by matching [...] usage [...] to [the] issues/requirements for them".
This is basically a spam filtering problem, and you're blaming the guy getting spammed.
> This is basically a spam filtering problem, and you're blaming the guy getting spammed.
Only the gripe displayed in the video (and #2 on his list) is a spam issue, and it's trivially fixed by disabling auditory alerts, which are not only generally useless but systematically annoying.
Let's check the other ones:
> It’s not a conversation until both sides are engaged.
Maybe it's not a conversation at all, and just an RFI or whatever. Furthermore, if you're not available set your status to one that matches instead of marking yourself as available at all time.
You can even default your status to "Not Available" or "Do Not Disturb". That way, people won't assume you're available... which is what you're saying by using the "Available" status.
Waiting for a SYN/ACK on IMs is entirely useless and highly counter-productive, you can ACK when you reply. In fact it's very annoying because I'm out taking a shit and instead of asking whatever you need and going on with your life as I come back and reply, you're either waiting in front of your screen for my ACK, or you're gone doing something else and by the time you come back I've ACKed and then I'm gone again, resetting the whole process.
If you want to converse, use VOIP.
> Don’t just jump right into a phone call. It’s polite to send a chat message first saying “online? time for a quick Skype call?” It’s annoying when the Skype phone starts ringing randomly.
it doesn't ring randomly, it rings when somebody calls, because they have something to tell you in person. Don't want to answer the call? Then don't
> And all I wanted was a little bit of quiet.
See again, use your status already, if you're not available say you aren't.
> Video calls are not a God given right. Just because you want to do video right now doesn’t mean I want to.
Settings > Video > Show that I have video to > no one.
> Don’t assume confidentiality.
That has nothing to etiquette, it only has to do with not being retarded.
If you want to converse, use VOIP.
Why not "if you want to converse, go visit them"? Most of the time when I want to converse, I want to use text rather than deal with all the baggage of audio and trying to manage social context -- context which is mostly absent in text.
> Why not "if you want to converse, go visit them"?
Because you can't hit a button and be at their doorstep. With skype, calling and texting have the same technical cost.
If you could hit a button and be at their doorstep, the vast majority of reasons to chat rather than going to visit them would still apply, though, right? Going to visit someone has a major overhead, socially. A quarter hour of conversation, at the least, before you can politely get to the subject of the visit, etc. Phone conversations have some of the same costs to a lesser degree: it's quite rude not to devote your full attention to the call (or appear to do so), and there might well still be a few minutes of overhead. With IM, you can almost just start talking. It cuts through all the extra junk around actually having the interesting part of the conversation with a person, but you can still have an actual conversation (even while you both do other things as the other person types), which is important for discussing things at length.
Basically, I would say that calling and texting have very different social costs, but calling and visiting are much closer that way, and that this is why it's almost always better to text than call, even for extended conversations.