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People who are too busy to stop what they are doing and change gears? I find it a polite way of determining if the other party is able to give me their attenti

by jrace 8y ago

People who are too busy to stop what they are doing and change gears? I find it a polite way of determining if the other party is able to give me their attention.

gowld 8y ago
If they are to busy to stop, they are usually also too busy to tell you they are busy.
eridius 8y ago
This really only applies to stream-based immediate communication (i.e. verbal communication). "Can I ask you a question?" is a short question that basically says "Can I take up more of your time?", as the mere act of asking someone a question is taking up time. If you just launch into your long question, the recipient has to wait for you to say your entire question before they can indicate whether they're even in a state to take questions right now. This isn't appropriate at all for packet-based asynchronous communication. It's packet-based, meaning that receiving a short question is no faster than receiving a long question (you don't have to actually read the long question in order to receive it). It's asynchronous, meaning, if you can't answer right this moment but can in a minute, then the asker can still go ahead and ask their question. What's more, it's outright rude in an asynchronous communication, because what you're actually doing is saying "hey can you please suspend what you're doing and have a synchronous communication with me?" when you almost certainly don't need a synchronous communication. About the only justification for this is "I don't want to type my question if nobody's around to answer it immediately, because I won't be staying long", but all I can say to that is: tough cookies. It's even worse if you do this in group chat (like IRC), because you're now asking anyone who's around to stop what they're doing and wait for your question. So it takes the above rudeness and magnifies it by the number of people currently reading the channel.

by jrace 8y ago

People who are too busy to stop what they are doing and change gears? I find it a polite way of determining if the other party is able to give me their attention.

gowld 8y ago

If they are to busy to stop, they are usually also too busy to tell you they are busy.

eridius 8y ago

This really only applies to stream-based immediate communication (i.e. verbal communication). "Can I ask you a question?" is a short question that basically says "Can I take up more of your time?", as the mere act of asking someone a question is taking up time. If you just launch into your long question, the recipient has to wait for you to say your entire question before they can indicate whether they're even in a state to take questions right now. This isn't appropriate at all for packet-based asynchronous communication. It's packet-based, meaning that receiving a short question is no faster than receiving a long question (you don't have to actually read the long question in order to receive it). It's asynchronous, meaning, if you can't answer right this moment but can in a minute, then the asker can still go ahead and ask their question. What's more, it's outright rude in an asynchronous communication, because what you're actually doing is saying "hey can you please suspend what you're doing and have a synchronous communication with me?" when you almost certainly don't need a synchronous communication. About the only justification for this is "I don't want to type my question if nobody's around to answer it immediately, because I won't be staying long", but all I can say to that is: tough cookies. It's even worse if you do this in group chat (like IRC), because you're now asking anyone who's around to stop what they're doing and wait for your question. So it takes the above rudeness and magnifies it by the number of people currently reading the channel.