These are my personal guidelines when using chat, I’m putting them in writing to avoid confusion. Some things like ping and afk might look strange to those that missed the IRC age.

It’s mostly for one on one chats but they work with group chat’s most of the time if you use common sense. Available at any large retailer near you.

To me a chat session is a permanent line between us, there are no goodbye’s just long AFK sessions like goodnight. It’s perfectly fine to suddenly stop in a conversation. It’s still there, if the other party really want’s a reply they can just send a question mark.

Working hours

During working hours my phone is on silent to keep my focus, I usually check for messages once every half our. So expect a delay. If I’m running pomodor’s then you will get a /afk – pomodoro from me meaning I’m away for 25 minutes.

The ping

Checking if you are there for friendly chat, just ping.

Me: ping
You: pong
Me: Hey I just figured out a large problem...

The magic .

It’s a lighter version of ping, mostly used to get a conversation going again when either party is distracted.

Me: <is typing for 15 minutes>
You: .
Me: Oh, sorry got distracted, so as I was saying....

The puzzled look or ?

When I send just a question mark there are two options, either you just wrote something I don’t understand and I would like you to rephrase it or go into detail or I asked something and didn’t get a reply yet and I would really like to know.

Me: I'm sapiosexual
You: ?
Me: To be aroused by intelligence

You: Do you have time this friday?
<time passes>
You: ?
Me: I'm a bit busy, I believe so will get back to it within the hour

Dealing with real life or AFK

The real world doesn’t care about our chat session, so if you suddenly need to pay attention to the real world just drop an AFK in the chat. Optionally you can put a reason behind it.

Me: /AFK - Meeting