Google Wave: Up and Running

Interacting with Other Participants

Our communication and collaboration with others on a wave can span a wide range, from peripheral observation of someone else’s blips to long-running exchanges of replies to collaboration on a complex online document. So, it’s important for you to keep an open mind with regard to how you and other participants use the Google Wave Client and how the level of interaction can be subject to quite a bit of variability, depending on the type of conversation in which you are engaged.

Tip

Because waves are such broad and versatile containers of information, it can be easy to limit our interaction to the conversation and collaboration models already familiar to us. I have to admit that I initially approached the Google Wave Client more as an IM console than anything else. Yet within a short period of time I quickly realized that you should not view conversations in Google Wave as equivalents to email exchanges or IM threads, because in reality conversations in Google Wave have no existing equivalent.

Waviquette

When Google Wave was initially released as a developer preview, a few developers began to discuss the topic of participant etiquette in a wave titled Waviquette. Thus far, the waviquette wave has grown to include more than 200 participants and hundreds of blips on various topics, including the following:

• When should a participant edit a wave rather than post a comment?

• Should participants edit their own response or respond to their own response?

• When should ...