Do you read away messages? Do you leave away messages? I've wondered what other people think about away messages. Personally, I think they should be descriptive about what you're doing, or, be very generic and say "I'm not at my computer". After that it can have some sort of quote that somewhat has to do with the situation, or your current mood, or random. I have my canned messages, for sleeping and while I'm at work - of course those times I might as well not be online, but I still am - and other regular tasks. Most of these have a quotation: movie quotes, music quotes, famous quotes, bible quotes, thought provoking quotes, or just ramblings of recent thoughts. So what do you think about away messages, should they just be simple one-liners of what you're doing, or do you like more such as quotes or thoughts, or do you like just quotes and no indication of why the person is away, or perhaps something else?
so maybe a r e a l l y long away message annoys people. but they're so much fun to play with!
I do like away messages! I'm bored of my canned ones, trying to cycle them out.
You don't have to put a title, it's optional. Perhaps I should have it auto-fill with the a reply to the title of whatever the reply is to. This thought did cross my mind when I was coding it, but I didn't know how to do it off the top of my head.
Away messages are quite good. They let me know why people are not talking to me (well, part of the reason, at least). I believe the best away messages tell people where you're at, and add something witty, informative, insightful, inspirational, or whatever else. Away messages that take five minutes to read are bad, though. Of course, I do not always follow these personal rules, but you can rpetend I have a good reason for not doing so.
I don't think there should be any rules whatsoever for away messages. They should reflect the mood of the person, or be an outlet for whimsy, funkiness, anger, or whatever floats one's boat. Of course, this is from a person who never sets a relevant away message, and quite often sets some that are utterly incomprehensible to her friends (i.e. " but I'm not pretending to be a potato.") So I'm not really sure how sound my opinion is.