There are people like me who interpret online communication as "forum" and can reply messages later, ofter after thinking over my response for quite a while (even writing a PM can take half a hour for me:) And the time for "thinking over" can be hours, days,....)
There are people who interpret it like a chat or phone call. For them it is rude when they say "hi" and you don't reply with "hi" - it is the same way for them as if you were in the same house and you didn't reply to "good evening, Alex!".
A very common problem is when people with different tempers meet. For example: an adult with tight schedule and several kids and a teenager.
The teenager also may have very tight schedule. Maybe this is the only day when he/she has time for chat this week. One young lady, for exmaple, told me that during the academic year she is only able to surf the Internet about 2 times a month when she's at home. In her school mobile phones are taken away from students. Then her schedule is many times tighter than mine:-/
Or may be this teenager has more free time. But during this chat he/she is fully yours, it is like you're in the same room and having a conversation. The adult, in turn, maintains contact with dozens people and does so differently.
A problem which may happen is that a forum person receives a message from a chat person, and then within 15 minutes another message: "why don't you answer?". Then everyone is offended.
The forum person feels being stalked. The chat person thinks the other person is very rude.
Hi Alex,
The problem you are addressing is interesting, at least for me.
What about this pattern:
a) the user has a switch that has two settings (s1, s2)
Setting (s1) allows detailed informations, like 'one hour ago', 'is on line', etc.
Setting (s2) allows only statistical informations to be known, like:
intensity of their presence online (average)
has not been active since 5 days, one week, etc.
On the programming side the problems are not relevant.
I like to see this site, as a big public library, when you enter a public library and
move around, you will recognize and (silently) greet your friends, when you see them
sitting around a table. No reason to hide in a public library, no reason to hide here,
but you may be free to do that, for instance if you don't want a particular person
to bother you.
Alex, I agree with Miriam.
