I have not had a chance to talk with SP lately, so today we were e-mailing each other back and forth, updating each other on different things. We were sending each other 2 or 3 e-mails at a time, each e-mail being a response to some other e-mail. After a while, we decided to simply combine our replies in single e-mails, even though we were e-mailing each other very informally. Sending a single e-mail with the necessary information, even if the e-mail resulted in being too large, was somehow better than sending multiple short e-mails. That got me thinking: could the concept of replying once to multiple messages, compared to replying to each message separately, be applied as a rule to various forms of online and offline communication?
Commenting once with multiple thoughts instead of commenting multiple times with multiple thoughts
You may be able to relate this concept to commenting. For example, imagine having someone called Bes post a new comment in response to every sentence in one of your blog articles. That would mean if your article had 10 sentences, Bes would respond to each line of that article in a separate comment, and end up posting 10 separate comments. Would you prefer having 10 single-lined comments by Bes to your article of 10 sentences, or would you prefer having a single comment by Bes with all the 10 lines combined into one or two paragraphs?
Replying immediately to each sentence versus waiting for someone to finish talking before responding collectively
The same idea can probably be seen in daily offline discussions also. You probably do not interrupt other people after every sentence that they say, but you wait until others have finished talking before you start talking yourself. Of course, in person, if you say something after each sentence uttered by somebody else, you may be seen as someone who interrupts others all the time. Compare that to waiting until a person has finished saying different things before you offer your opinion. Which one would you prefer?
Imagine if everyone was comfortable with the idea of being interrupted with an immediate response from you after they finished saying each sentence, which one would you prefer then? What is your opinion on this?
I would prefer one long comment from Bes commenting on each of my points, as he does now, rather than separate comments on every sentence in my post.
Sometimes I'm guilty of interrupting people before they finish talking. I just can't help it – my tongue blurts out the thoughts in my mind before I can take charge. But I know it's not a good thing, and I'm working on it.
However, some people have a tendency to talk non-stop for a very long time, then I think it's a good idea to inject some of your thoughts and opinions into their long speech
Thanks for answering the questions Vivien. I am glad that Bes has been doing the right thing at least for your site.
You have a point: some people do talk nonstop for very long periods of time. For such people, I think it can be all right to let them know that you have a remark or an idea, before you forget it. I am sure if done right, the person who talks for longer periods of time can realize , without feeling embarrassed or guilty on a critical level, that they kept talking for too long without giving the other person any chance to speak. If you help someone by letting them know of their shortcoming and by helping them save face also, they will return the favor and in many cases be glad to carry on conversations again.
Good point, thanks!