call waiting and away message

[John McChesney-Young]

On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Dennis Baron wrote:
>
>>  I'm trying to discover early uses of "away message."...

and Fred Shapiro wrote:

>Here's the earliest I readily find on Nexis:
>
>
>The Washington Times
>July 12, 2001, Thursday, Final Edition

The first example I find in Usenet via Google Groups is from May 19, 1988:

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%22away+message%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1987&as_maxd=6&as_maxm=2&as_maxy=1989&selm=8805191529.AA26163%40inria.inria.fr&rnum=2

a.k.a. http://tinyurl.com/3e8n4

It should be obvious that "I am away" messages should not be sent more than
once to the same recipient. However, Jacob's suggestion does have a practical
interest. Suppose the person which is luckily cruising the Carribeans for 2
monthes is a member of several distribution lists: all members of all these
lists, often the same persons, will receive the "I am away" notification..
By sending (once) the " away message " or other auto answers as specially
typed messages (e.g. user level acknowledgments), one gives the opportunity
to the lists to adopt a special treatment, e.g. dropping them rather than
broadcasting.

(end quote)

The next I find (with this particular sense) is from June 12, 1991 in
a group devoted to discussion of Internet Relay Chat (IRC):

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%22away+message%22&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=12&as_minm=5&as_miny=1990&as_maxd=6&as_maxm=2&as_maxy=1992&selm=5815%40uniol.UUCP&rnum=12

or: http://tinyurl.com/2h5o4

At this point of net-degeneration I'd prefer to give the /wall command (which
only generates one netwide broadcast, just as much as a /nick change or an
/ away message ) to the public: everyone can /wall, and everyone /ignores all
/walls except those who enjoy sending and receiving them.

(end quote)

The former quote suggests an e-mail auto-response, and the latter an
auto-response in real-time on-line conversation.

John
--


*** John McChesney-Young  **  panis at pacbell.net  **   Berkeley,
California, U.S.A.  ***