Abstract
Instant Messaging (IM) can be disruptive and cognitively hard to handle because it requires context switching. This results in 2 potentially counter productive effects:
- lowering the quality of the conversation for both parts that are not equally concentrated;
- it can introduce a repulsion towards this protocol.
Since this is a human problem, this proposal is a human based solution.
Proposal
When you want to talk to someone you ask for «real availability» and a «time slot» and a «summary» of what you want to talk about given a «priority». It is in the interest of both party to agree on something mutually benefiting.
The idea is to propose a multi cultural loosely formal flow of conversation for agreeing to a talk in good conditions.
Implementation.
Casual priority is fine and is the only proposed level.
Default arguments are:
- time slots : 10 minutes (explained later). NEVER ask more than 45 mins;
- summary : What's up? (salamalecs explaiend later);
- priority : casual (except if you want people to dislike you).
Time negociation
Ex: «hey man, can you spare some 10 minutes for me?»
The interrogative formulation should put your interlocutor at ease so he understands he can refuse or postpones.
Asking for an explicit time slot helps your interlocutor answer truthfully.
If the receiver is not answering it means he or she cannot.
Don't retry the opening message aggressively. Spacing gracefully the requests should be based on the historic of conversation you had. If you had not talked to someone over 1 year, don't expect the person to answer you back in 5 mins, but rather in the same amount of time since you last interacted.
If you really want to push, multiply each retry by an order of magnitude. Min time for repushing should be done according to the how busy your interlocutor is, your proximity with the person, and your «average level of interaction» on a rough moving average of one month.
It should never go below 5 mins for the first retry (with a good friend you interact a lot with) and 15 mins for a good friend you have not talked in years.
(try to find a rough simple equation based on sociogram proximity)
Summary/context.
Announcing the context
At this point, the talk is NOT accepted.A tad more negotiation may be needed.
It is cool for person to interact to have a short summary so that people can know if it will be "information" (asymmetric with a higher volume from the emitter) "communication" (symmetric), "advice" (asymmetric, but reversed).
Defaut is symmetric. Asymmetry is boring and if so you should think of NOT using IM.
Context:
business related/real life related/balancedDefault: balanced.
If you use IM for business related stuffs, I don't think this proposal applies to you. There are multiple ISO norms for handling support. People also tends to dislike doing free consulting in an interruptive way out of the blue. If you poke someone for asking him business related stuffs, you are probably asking for free consulting. Please, DON'T. There is no such things as free beers. If so you should propose clearly a compensation, even if it casual at the beginning.
Ex : Please, can you Can you give me 10 mins of your time between now and thursday on IEEE 802.1q? I will gladly pay you back a coffee sunday for your help.
Notice the importance of being polite. DON'T use imperative forms, they express orders. Use polite structured form. Give all the information in a single precise statement.
The more you are needing the advice, the less you should be pushy. It means you value this person much and you should not alienate her/his good will.
Default : Salamalecs (work in progress)
When greeting each others you can't help but notice muslims/persians have an efficient advanced human protocol for updating news on a social graph called in french salamalecs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As-salamu_alaykum
I don't know the religious part, but the human//cultural behaviour that results is clearly a handshaking protocol that seems pretty efficient.
I don't know how to transpose it yet in an occidental way of thinking, but I am working on it.
Receiver expected behaviour
People at my opinion tend to answer too much.
You have a life and a context. If you trust the person poking you, you expect him to know the obvious:
- you may not have time to answer;
- you may be dealing with a lot of stuff;
- it may be unsafe (either you are driving, or at a job interview)
- you may not be interested by the topic, but it does not mean you don't like the person.
In the old days we tended to send an ACK to every sollicitations because network delivery could failed (poorly configured SMTP, netsplit....) and we could not know if the receiver was connected.
Today, we are receiving far more solicitations and we may forget about old messages.
If you did not answer, have faith in your interlocutor to repoke you in a graceful way. The x2 between every sollicitation is based on the law of «espérance»(find translation in english + reference) when having incomplete information about the measure of an event.
Believe me, mathematically, it is pretty much a good idea to make every solicitations if important spaced by a 2x factor (kind of like DHCP_REQUEST)
Once the topic/time are accepted, you can begin the conversation.
Content negociation SHOULD not exceed 4 lines/15 minutes (waiting/1st retry included). The speed of negotiation should give you an hint on the expected attention span of the receiver.
If you can't spare the time for negotiating DONT answer back. It is awkward for both parties.
Time agreement: When // for how long.
minimum time slot: 7 mins.
Experimentally it is good for better conversation, it makes you able to buffer your conversation in your head and be able to higher the bandwidth.
Using a slow start that is casual and progressively getting in the subject can be regarded as the human counterpart of old time modems negotiating for the best throughput.
You emitter is NOT a computer. Civility and asking questions about the context will help you adapt, it is not wasted time. It is clever to ask news that are correlated to the ability of your receiver to be intellectually available. Slow start means you should not chains the questions in one interaction.
ex: Are you fine? How are you kids? Is your job okay?
Multiple questions are NOT a good opening. Always serialize your opening.
Making a branch prediction with combined questions may give awful results.
What if the guy lost his wife and kids due to his tendency to workaholism?
Once the time is agreed you can set a hard limit: by saying : clock on.
It is cool to let the person with the busiest context tell the clock off.
It is fun to hold to your words about time. You'll learn in the process how chronophage IM are.
A grace time after the clock is off is required to close the conversation gracefully with the usual polite formulation. It should be short and concise.
Ex:
A : thks, bye :)
B : my pleasure, @++
References:
To be done
* netiquette (IETF RFC 1830?)
* multitasking considered harmfull
* something about RS232 or any actual low level HW protocol could be fun;
* maybe finding an outdated old fashioned book with funny pictures totally outdated with a pedantic title like «le guide de la politesse par l'amiral mes fesses» should be funny
* I really love salamalecs so finding a good unbiased article by an anthropologist is a must
* putting a fake normalization comity reference or creating one like HNETF could be fun: Human NOT an Engineer Task Force with a motto such as «we care about all that is way above the applicative OSI layer» to parody/make an hommage of IETF should be fun.
* some SERIOUS hard data to backup my claims (X2 estimations, concentration spans, ...)
TODO
format that as a PEP or RFC
make RFC 00 for defining the RFC format/way of interacting to make that evolve
specify it is a draft somewhere
find an IRC channel for discussing :)
corrections (grammar/orthograph)
experiment, and share to have feedbacks, maybe it could actually work.
don't overdo it.
make a nice state/transition diagram
provide a full example with time line (copy/paste, prune, s/// of an actual conversation that worked this way).
add a paragraph about multi culturalism and the danger of expecting people to have the same expectation as you
EDIT : name it salamalec protocol, I really love this idea.
