On Wed, 15 Jan 2003, Noel J. Bergman wrote: > On the other hand, I have repeatedly noticed that when instant messaging is > available, it has multiple benefits:
I fully agree to virtually all of those. I do would like however to also add a few negative ones: It also creates a backchannel which places people in the wrong time zone, or those who do not have 24x7 internet access, at a disadvantage. It also puts those who do not speak the language readily to keep up with the interaction at the fluid pace. It also may put a certain class of very knowledgable people, which may not be as outgoign, willing or able to follow fluid debates, to interject their thoughds. There are a lot of examples in the history of apache where a 3 sentence thoughdful email answering a 4 day old email in an email thread which had since spun out of control in one time-zone got through the crux of the matter better than the interactive explosion. And it also does not give access to a quality 'knowledge base' i.e. an googlable space for others to find solutions in nearly as easily. I see great benefits of IM; but I alse see threaths to the international community sense and to the accesibility of 'others' who are not part of the incrowd to the knowledge of the community. Dw
