Gtalk Etiquette

When in the middle of an online chat, I get extremely pissed off if I have to wait more than 20 seconds to get each reply. Yes, the other person might be doing something important and I might be interrupting, but I expect to be told that so I don't wait staring at the chat window waiting for a reply. If you are available, i.e. green, and you are in the middle of a conversation with me, I expect you to give replies instantaneously.

In a face-to-face conversation, you would need to give undivided attention to the person you are talking to. It would be inappropriate to do anything else mentally/physically involving when in the middle of the conversation. It would be inappropriate to talk to a third person in between too. The dynamics of an online conversation are clearly different. The thing that makes online conversations different is the delay in transmission of messages. It would be a waste of time to do nothing other than chat with one person. In the time between the instant you send your message and the instant you receive the reply, you could and should do something else. This will help minimize your idle time.

However, your idle time is not the singular most important thing. On the other side is a human being, whose time is just as valuable as yours, irrespective of who you are! Keeping this in mind, I have set myself some rules which I faithfully stick to all the time.

(1) As soon as I log into gmail, I assess my status. Am I free to talk to people? If yes, I am green (available). If not, I assess how busy I am. If I am busy enough to be unable to give pingers undivided attention, but free enough that I would like to hear if someone has something interesting or important, I am red (busy). If I just do not want anyone to bother me whatever happens, I am invisible. Further still, if I do not want the rare event of someone taking the chance and pinging me even when I show as offline (hoping I am invisible), I sign out of chat.

(2) If I am busy/invisible and someone pings me, there is no pressure on me to reply. I am allowed to take my time. I need not even reply in the near future. It is their problem they pinged me in spite of me not being green.

(3) If I am green, and someone pings me, I try to reply as soon as I can. If it is longer than some amount of time, I shoot a "sorry, was not at desk". This is w.r.t. the first reply.

***(4) With subsequent replies I make it a point to reply INSTANTANEOUSLY (when I am green)! The only delay the other person should face with each reply should be time_taken_for_message_to_reach_me + my_thinking_time + typing_time + time_taken_for_travel_of_message + epsilon. If I cannot reply instantaneously, I make sure the other person knows I am doing something else. Once again, if I am red, all this is not necessary. I can take my time for each reply.

(5) If I violate any of the above, I apologise sincerely, irrespective of who the other person is.

NOTE:- If I have violated any of the above 5 with you, it will be because you have violated one or more of points (1)-(5), OFTEN.

I have a low opinion of anyone who grossly violates points (1)-(5) (okay once in a while). Who am I to make rules and make judgments you ask? I am no one. It is unlikely that I head a multi-billion-dollar company in the immediate future and hence you really need not be nice to me. However, do not expect me to be nice to you either. If you make me wait for every reply I need to get from you, be prepared to face the same thing.

Having rules for online chatting seems too prudish. Online chatting is informal and I want it to remain that way. However, one must keep in mind that on the other side is a human being, whose every second is as valuable as yours. It is about respect and value for others time, and about valuing it as much as you value yours. It is easy to be respectful towards your professors, your managers, your elders. Being respectful to them reflects nothing about your character. You respect them because you are the one who loses if you don't. The fact that you respect them only means you are not stupid, and that is not much. How much you respect your equals (your friends, loved ones, etc) and people below you is what counts. Watching youtube videos or reading articles when in the middle of a conversation is plain rude. If you still want to do it, just let the other person know that you are doing. That is the least you can do.

I swear to god that this post is not aimed at anyone. I hope and I do believe that my friends and the people I care about do not undervalue my time. Everyone is nice to me. I write this post just to float the idea that it is not just your time that is important.

As always, I have a CS analogy for this. You are a CPU. The way you respond to people pinging you reflects the job scheduling algorithm you are running. The people pinging you are the jobs that request the CPU. You try to maximize the throughput, i.e. minimize CPU idle time. The time taken for your message to travel to the destination and for the reply to come back is akin to jobs waiting for an I/O resources. I think it is best you run a mix of round-robin-scheduling and first-come-first-serve. And even with round-robin scheduling, have an upper limit on the number of jobs you schedule. You should determine the upper limit for yourself, depends on your typing speed and other stuff. There is something slightly different here though. Minimizing job starvation time (time spent by second person waiting for your replies) is almost as important as minimizing CPU idle time (your idle time). The importance ratio is what reflects your character. Let us define:

importance_ratio = importance_of_second_person's_time / importance_of_your_time

You are free to set it to whatever you want. If you set it to 0, you are an arrogant bastard. If you set it to infinity, you are a noble idiot. 0.9 to 1.0 would be best I think.