Sorry, I only half-answered. I'm not quite awake yet. Anyway:
Another thing I notice is that when there's a group of people I like having a conversation, my instinct is to wander up, join the circle, and listen quietly until I understand the topic of conversation before beginning to join in. Other people seem much more willing to wander up to someone I'm in the middle of talking to, say hi to them and start their own conversation with them
Personally I'd go for a compromise between those two strategies -- wander up, say "Hi" but leave it up to the people whose conversation I've joined whether they want to derail their conversation and talk to me, or carry on as they were (in which case I'll either join in as I pick up the threads of the conversation, or wander off again if it's not to my taste). It's a way of signalling your presence & your interest in talking to the people present, but still being polite about it. I think if people just wander up to a group and remain silent it's harder for the group to include them in the conversation unforcedly (yes, you could say "So what do you think of $subject, $newcomer?" but it'd seem very seminar-ish).
It's much more like IRC than usenet, really -- you join the channel, say "Hello", and then see what happens. Sometimes nobody takes much notice except perhaps to say "hi" inbetween carrying on with an existing conversation, and you just pick up the thread and join in with that (if you want to); other times everybody says "Hi, how are you?" and is happy for you to dictate the direction of the conversation.
(Of course, IRC is still different, because you can have lots of simultaneous conversations going on at once with different people, and your text can't actually obscure somebody else's in the way that one person can talk over another... which is one of the reasons I like IRC.)
And also, to what extent have I misperceived the situation to begin with (do I actually monopolise conversations without even noticing, for example)?
"It's much more like IRC than usenet, really -- you join the channel, say "Hello", and then see what happens."
I don't IRC much these days, but when I do, I do that and it usually turns out everybody is idle :-)
"... which is one of the reasons I like IRC."
Yes, it's certainly got its good points as a conversation medium. I think the only thing I don't like about it is that you don't get any feedback on whether the other person is sitting idle or in the middle of frantically typing a three-line response to you - I know I've occasionally tried to change the subject due to a pause, only to find that actually the previous subject was very much alive so I needn't have bothered :-) Not sure whether there's any sensible way to fix that one, though.
Can I just compliment you on the outstanding invention of a "moral shetland pony"? That's a fantastic concept. And image. *grin*
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Another thing I notice is that when there's a group of people I like having a conversation, my instinct is to wander up, join the circle, and listen quietly until I understand the topic of conversation before beginning to join in. Other people seem much more willing to wander up to someone I'm in the middle of talking to, say hi to them and start their own conversation with them
Personally I'd go for a compromise between those two strategies -- wander up, say "Hi" but leave it up to the people whose conversation I've joined whether they want to derail their conversation and talk to me, or carry on as they were (in which case I'll either join in as I pick up the threads of the conversation, or wander off again if it's not to my taste). It's a way of signalling your presence & your interest in talking to the people present, but still being polite about it. I think if people just wander up to a group and remain silent it's harder for the group to include them in the conversation unforcedly (yes, you could say "So what do you think of $subject, $newcomer?" but it'd seem very seminar-ish).
It's much more like IRC than usenet, really -- you join the channel, say "Hello", and then see what happens. Sometimes nobody takes much notice except perhaps to say "hi" inbetween carrying on with an existing conversation, and you just pick up the thread and join in with that (if you want to); other times everybody says "Hi, how are you?" and is happy for you to dictate the direction of the conversation.
(Of course, IRC is still different, because you can have lots of simultaneous conversations going on at once with different people, and your text can't actually obscure somebody else's in the way that one person can talk over another... which is one of the reasons I like IRC.)
And also, to what extent have I misperceived the situation to begin with (do I actually monopolise conversations without even noticing, for example)?
I don't think you do that at all.
I don't IRC much these days, but when I do, I do that and it usually turns out everybody is idle :-)
"... which is one of the reasons I like IRC."
Yes, it's certainly got its good points as a conversation medium. I think the only thing I don't like about it is that you don't get any feedback on whether the other person is sitting idle or in the middle of frantically typing a three-line response to you - I know I've occasionally tried to change the subject due to a pause, only to find that actually the previous subject was very much alive so I needn't have bothered :-) Not sure whether there's any sensible way to fix that one, though.
Can I just compliment you on the outstanding invention of a "moral shetland pony"? That's a fantastic concept. And image. *grin*