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Highly personal opinion, there's no need to mute in those scenarios either (at least in low participant count videos). It makes the speaker able to adapt to thi

Highly personal opinion, there's no need to mute in those scenarios either (at least in low participant count videos). It makes the speaker able to adapt to things that are impacting their listener's attention. Even if they're muted, a child crying is going to take their attention, and its better that the speaker is aware of it. A simple noise canceling microphone takes care of distant, and thus unimportant sounds. EDIT: Please take note of the "in low participant count videos" caveat above before lambasting me about how this doesn't work in 40 person meetings. I'm talking about meetings with 3-4 people.

stingraycharles 6y ago
This simply doesn’t work in the long run, and/or at scale. For me someone who doesn’t mute while they’re not talking is a dead giveaway they haven’t been doing remote work for very long. It’s simply rude to broadcast your noise to the entire group of people, let alone dozens of people doing so at the same time. If your child is crying, it’s fine, I understand how things are, and of course I’ll understand you’re distracted. However, I’m not fine with your child distracting all 20 people on the call.
pen2l 6y ago
My opinion: no, do mute, as just another adhd kiddo, man those police sirens will bring me down in no time. I get what you're saying though, and I recognize there's value in folks getting to know a little bit of each other's situation -- but I think we can just let each other know of our situations verbally when an event rises to the level of a certain importance, and minimize the unimportant sounds as much as possible.
GhostVII 6y ago
Hearing a child crying doesn't just make me aware that someone is distracted, it also distracts me and makes it much harder to communicate. I would much rather have one person on the call be distracted while on mute than have the entire call be distracted. Also depending on what video conferencing software you use, background noise like crying continually interrupts the speaker and makes it really hard to hear. Nothing annoys me more than people having background noise and not muting themselves, no one should be pushing crying babies and barking dogs to my headphones without a reason it completely ruins the call for me. If I really need to know if they are distracted, I can just look at their video.
- saurik 6y ago
  I think a big difference is the assumption of the kind of meeting you are in; for most of the business meetings I consider valuable, if there is someone distracted by a transient issue the meeting should stop and wait, and if it doesn't they are just going to have to stop everything themselves to request things be repeated for them. If you are in a meeting and it doesn't matter if you are distracted you aren't really participating, are you? ;P So like, definitely mute the call as you are just an observer.
juliansimioni 6y ago
The answer probably depends on if it's a big or small meeting. For a 1-on-1, you absolutely want to know if the other person on the call is going to be distracted, or you're wasting your time. For a 40 person all hands, the meeting could probably never proceed if it waited for everyone to be completely distraction free.

stingraycharles 6y ago

This simply doesn’t work in the long run, and/or at scale. For me someone who doesn’t mute while they’re not talking is a dead giveaway they haven’t been doing remote work for very long. It’s simply rude to broadcast your noise to the entire group of people, let alone dozens of people doing so at the same time. If your child is crying, it’s fine, I understand how things are, and of course I’ll understand you’re distracted. However, I’m not fine with your child distracting all 20 people on the call.

pen2l 6y ago

My opinion: no, do mute, as just another adhd kiddo, man those police sirens will bring me down in no time. I get what you're saying though, and I recognize there's value in folks getting to know a little bit of each other's situation -- but I think we can just let each other know of our situations verbally when an event rises to the level of a certain importance, and minimize the unimportant sounds as much as possible.

GhostVII 6y ago

Hearing a child crying doesn't just make me aware that someone is distracted, it also distracts me and makes it much harder to communicate. I would much rather have one person on the call be distracted while on mute than have the entire call be distracted. Also depending on what video conferencing software you use, background noise like crying continually interrupts the speaker and makes it really hard to hear. Nothing annoys me more than people having background noise and not muting themselves, no one should be pushing crying babies and barking dogs to my headphones without a reason it completely ruins the call for me. If I really need to know if they are distracted, I can just look at their video.

saurik 6y ago
I think a big difference is the assumption of the kind of meeting you are in; for most of the business meetings I consider valuable, if there is someone distracted by a transient issue the meeting should stop and wait, and if it doesn't they are just going to have to stop everything themselves to request things be repeated for them. If you are in a meeting and it doesn't matter if you are distracted you aren't really participating, are you? ;P So like, definitely mute the call as you are just an observer.

juliansimioni 6y ago

The answer probably depends on if it's a big or small meeting. For a 1-on-1, you absolutely want to know if the other person on the call is going to be distracted, or you're wasting your time. For a 40 person all hands, the meeting could probably never proceed if it waited for everyone to be completely distraction free.