What's so dignifying about a response, anyway?

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Originally posted by Del Murder
If I don't want to talk I don't turn the ims on.

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Exactly. Having you IM client open and not away is telling people that you are online and at least available to talk to.

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Originally posted by BernhardAIM should just make use of the handy invisibility function. That way you can talk to anyone you want yet not be bothered by others. It's probably not that damn hard to implement. Not to mention the ability to IM an offline user. Two things (the only things?) that ICQ does right. Pretty stellar actually

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Trillian adds that functionality to AIM. DeadAIM and GAIM might do so as well, I haven't checked.

People who get offended when YOU HAVE AN AWAY MESSAGE UP are stupid imho. Give us names so we can like um...judge them. No I jest. Anyway, the 'constantly being bombarded by messages because you wanted to talk to one person' is annoying. I typically try to tell a person to slow down, especially when I'm hectic-ly thinking of something and can't entertain a shallow convo, but it usually doesn't work. That's what the block/ignore button's for.

*nod*

If I see an away message, I take the hint and assume they're busy. I don't expect anyone's time on any messanger, as I've said before. If I IM you and you really don't feel like chatting to me, telling me so would do much better than keep talking to me out of respect for my feelings.

I usually just don't respond to 80% of the people who IM me =p

If you have an 'away' message on your instant messenger, then fair enough. If you don't have an away message, I consider it to be rude, ignorant and inconsiderate when people don't bother replying to those who want to talk to them. Not putting yourself in 'away' mode when in actual fact you are away is a prime example of how not to use instant messenger programs. Also, think of how someone would react in real life. If you said 'hello' to your workmate, and he/she completely ignored you without making any response whatsoever, you'd be quite upset - wouldn't you? It's just as rude to do this in Internet conversations, in my opinion.

Lol, I blow my friends off as they say hi to me in the halls all the time. =D

And i always view it as MESSAGING. Like, leave a MESSAGE ill get back to you. Its in internet answering machine for me. Like most people i know don't call people back when they get a message on their answering machine.

If people don't respond to me on a PM or IM, I usually just guess that they are busy or away or something, so I might wait a while then just close the window and stop trying to chat. The silly thing about the "Away" status, I've found on MSN anyway, is that people will still message me, then become offended or something that I don't reply, even though I say I'm away. I'm sure some people don't seem to get what "Away" means.

I wouldn't be too offended about people not responding to my pms either, however if I pmed somebody and saw that they had read it and been online here loads since then, I would be a little put off. Sometimes I pm people to compliment them on their signature or website or something, and if they are around here anyway, I don't think it would hurt them just to say thank you or something.

But still, we all have busy lives, I often forget to respond to people or if I'm very busy or upset or something and somebody is IMing me, I might just not respond, even without an "Away" sign on. I do try and use Away or Busy statuses though. But hey, it's just the net, and I've got used to this sorta thing now.

I mostly only use MSN because I can see the window pop up when I get mail. I have myself on Away most of the time. This means that I'm not at the computer or I'm too busy with something else to talk at the moment. If someone IM's me while this message is up, I just get back to them whenever I get back to the computer or I have time. It doesn't mean that I don't want to talk...it just means that I'm not there or I'm too busy. If I didn't ever want to talk to anyone I would put it on the Invisible/Offline mode. Anyone who gets upset when they try to have a conversation with someone when they're busy is being a bit silly, in my opinion. Sometimes, though, MSN will switch the message over to ONLINE without me knowing about it. This is the one problem that I have with MSN.

There's no need to even turn on an instant messanging system if you won't be around to answer it. That's my philosophy. If I don't want to chat on AIM, I don't turn it on. Being "available" means just that. You're telling people that you're around to chat. Not answering IM's is telling people that you're around to chat, but just not to them. If you set an "away" message, then that changes everything. I only have problems with people who are "available" which tells me that they're at the comp ready to chat, that don't respond.

anyone who gets offended over anything involving instant messengers and who responds to whom needs to get out of the house more often and get over it. Unless it's your girlfriend/brother/parole officer, there's no reasonable expectation for response. if you send messages every day and never get a response, maybe you should catch a clue.

personally i just give the person a reply to say im goin or im busy....no problem wont take long....and if they respond back u not need to worry cause they know where u goin.....

I wish people would IM me.

I'm too lazy to turn on/off the idle/away/whatever mode all the time, so just leave it on :p

Hence why I never message Guu -- I never know when [gender removed to add to confusion]'s online anyway. So instead of leaving a message I just post in the help forum. [opposite gender than before used here to really confuse people] will probably answer me anyway.

The Help Forum should be renamed the Guu Forum.