I was wondering about what the rules of courtesy (called “nettiquette”, I believe) are surrounding late replies. Naturally you want to reply to a post right away, esp. if they ask by name. But you do have a life of your own, such as it is.
I know you can reply in 24 hours, which is the bare minimum, right? By then your post is typically out-of-place, because the tone of the discussion has changed. But you can wait until the discussion is over. But then your reply still seems a little silly, after everyone has stopped. So what do you do? Specifically…
What board members typically do in that situation? and
What are you supposed to do? (I know there are no specific rules. But there must be some unofficial rule that would apply.)
As far as I’m concerned, the entire thread is available for comment. If people don’t want to continue the older part of the conversation, it’s fine, but you aren’t interrupting anything by trying.
The main (n)etiquette problem is responding without even the most basic check to see if what you’ve said has already been said, or if the topic had actually fizzled out, rather than just being left hanging. And I know that some people don’t like contentless replies, like thanking someone, and would prefer that be done in PM.
But, even then, it’s not really rude–just unnecessary. Yeah, your post is likely to be skipped, but I would hope no one would think lesser of you.
