I hate this trend. I also hate the very similar trend of being logged onto IM 24/7, with an away message and the program set to never show whether they're idle or not. This serves no fucking purpose to your friends, as they have no goddamn clue whether you are there or not ever. And 5 of the people I actually want to talk to on AIM do this on a regular basis.

(Reply) (Thread)

I do this on my corp IM client, where I'm on 24/7 and have no auto-away, and have no plans to stop.

I never want to be in a position where someone comes after me and asks why I've been idle since 10:23.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

Also people who are invisible all the time. I notice this mostly among my coworkers. I'm tempted to adapt a policy of refusing to answer the questions of people who pretend they aren't there.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

They totally aren't here right now to read this.

(Reply) (Thread)

A-fucking-men.

(Reply) (Thread)

Dear people who ambush me the second I stop being idle and get offended when I don't answer within ten seconds:

You're *so* off the Christmas list.

(Reply) (Thread) (Expand)

*amen

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

One could shorten this to:

Dear people: You're *so* off the list.

and solve the whole problem!

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

Yup.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I'm always logged in, and I don't have it set to mark me as idle/away after so long. Though, when I'm actually not around, I'll set my status to Away/Busy/Whatever manually.

(Reply) (Thread)

That's great.

See the part where I said "fucking knock that off"?

That's for you.

Or would be, if I ever wanted to talk to you.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

Huh. Fixed.

(Reply) (Thread)

I mean, "I just fixed my settings. Why hadn't I done that before?"

I haven't fixed the problem globally or anything like that.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

wow....send a message. If they're there and available, they're respond. If not, they won't.

Seems simple to me...

(Reply) (Thread) (Expand)

I'm going to have UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT tattooed on your forehead.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

Thank you, jwz.

I thought I was the only person in the world annoyed by people who do that to their IM programs. Sometimes they don't even answer my instant messages when they get back.

(Reply) (Thread)

What about using certain away messages to indicate that you're at your computer, but not terribly responsive to IM? (In particular, this would be the message that would flip on when you go idle.)

I suppose just logging out is also an option at that point.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Argh. Yeah, I can think of at least one person I IM less than I used to because this person deliberately has their clients set as never-idle.

(Reply) (Thread)

I do this, and here's why:

1. I always forget to manually set myself as away.

2. When I do set myself as away, I always forget to set myself as back.

3. When I tried auto-away, it was pointless because I am frequently up and down from the computer doing things.
3a. If it said I was available, there's a good chance I had probably just gotten up and was doing dishes, taking the trash out, or playing with my pets or something.
3b. If it said I was gone, I might be sitting right at the computer - watching a movie or a TV show, usually - but not touching it to click off the away status.

I don't see what's so wrong with a simple "Hey, you there?" You know, like we used to do with those "phone" thingies.

(Reply) (Thread)

Re: #2...

I was "Out to Lunch" at work for six days. That's what, a 100 martini lunch?

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I want an IM client which allows me to set up friends groups such that different people see a different status. If I'm at home, IM me all you like, I probably need entertaining. If I'm at work, you'd better be a lover or it better matter.

(Reply) (Thread)

I've used brute force to implement this by having "home" and "work" accounts.

My "home" system is superior though, because I can use Adium to log in to all of the IMs my random friends have accounts on.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

blame blackberry! I have friends who have them and whenever they connect with their crackberry it always shows them as available, it can stay like that for days, I guess they are available, but they likely won't want to hear the bips of an incoming message at 4AM

(Reply) (Thread)

Consider a deluge of messages sent at 4am to be a form of behavior modification therapy for crackberry addicts.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread) (Expand)

i have no life.

i'm always available.

(Reply) (Thread)

The whole concept of "available" is broken when it's done manually (I want to be able to get up and walk away without having to go through a ritual) and it's broken when it's done automatically (just because I touched an input device in the past 120 seconds doesn't mean I'm still around.)

There needs to be a status based on camera input -- not broadcasting the picture, but just a flag saying whether it's an unmoving background or not.

(Reply) (Thread)

Not to change the subject or anything, but isn't IM the least efficient mode of communication ever? I find it thoroughly useless for anything other than sending short messages or links, which e-mail does just fine anyway, at nearly the same speed. Just about every "conversation" I've had over IM is painful - I've gotten into fights with significant others because of lags in IM, where the same conversation over the phone or e-mail would have been fine...

E-mail also has the advantage of not instantly disappearing when the conversation is done, essential in the working world. Plus, that whole idle/away thing is a non-issue.

Yeah, I just can't stand IM.

(Reply) (Thread)

You made the point I tried to make in my buried post up there very succinctly.

So like, totally seconded.

IM is all the worst parts of realtime communication -- particularly the invasive "status" information (allowing the whole concept of "awkward silences" in a way you don't even get with IRC, especially if typing notification is on) -- with none of the expressiveness or other benefits of actual meatspace conversation.

For some reason it's not (often) awkward to be distracted or find someone distracted on the phone -- something about the aural input triggers our meatspace empathy circuits -- but the blank silence / overwrought emoticon space of IM is inexplicably infuriating.

Of course, that makes it attractive among the youth set, since it's a vehicle for mystery and drama -- exciting! -- and because their communications options are limited otherwise. But face it, if you're grown up and using IM off a corporate campus, you're using a communications method that was specifically designed to appeal to 12 year olds and 48 year olds trying to pick up 12 year olds.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Not intentionally done this myself, though that doesn't stop MSN and/or Yahoo conspiring amongst themselves to say I'm away when I'm not, and that I'm not away when I am.

Oh, and every once in a while pretend I'm offline, but only to certain people, and in a way that makes some messages get through.

(Reply) (Thread)

But no one but my husband ever messages me anyway, and he always knows where I am. And I don't want my boss to think I'm not working every time I use the other computer for 10 minutes. (pouty face)

(Reply) (Thread)

Doesn't your client report idle time based on keyboard usage? Mine dims out the user if they've been idle for more than 10 minutes. Isn't that good enough?

(Reply) (Thread)

It's a setting that can be enabled/disabled on clients. But in order for it to work, the person on the other end has to enable the setting. Which is what jwz's original complaint was about.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I do this to confound the following possibilities:

* I am away.

* I don't want to talk to you.

* I do want to talk to you but something else is higher-priority right now. (Like, say, Assassin's Creed, or possibly some actual computer programming mental state maintenance.)

If I allow myself to appear idle, then when I am not idle then people assume I am willing to speak with them, and become offended for no good reason if I do not choose to respond to their messages when I suddenly appear non-idle. If I log off when I am not actually at the computer, then people assume that I am there when I am logged in, which is not the case when I (frequently) disappear from the keyboard for random periods of time.

(Reply) (Thread)

Now that I read this carefully, I realize that the initial post only says:

Broadcasting presence = true when presence = false is bad.

The corollary, while taken up in the collective whine down here, was not mentioned and does not necessarily hold.

So let's all breathe for a second:

Constant presence is specifically aggravating because it does not suggest 'stop trying,' and, if you wish you could believe IM status flags, actively suggests 'keep trying.'

Constant awayness is less problematic because at least it's broadcasting the uncertainty (or, if you believe we should all be broadcasting true status, antisocialness) to begin with, sparing the guessing game.

Fair enough. I'm only crapping this post out because, once I got it, I realized I've never quite encountered that problem with IM, where people eventually close the damn program to get some privacy or stop being bothered, but it's an accepted fact of life with IRC (though the common interfaces to IRC give you a choice of how loudly you want to be annoyed when you do get a response).

(Reply) (Thread)