Interrupting with hand.

Why is this change being made?

The handbook condones verbal interrupting. While interrupting is good for the overall conversation, doing it verbally is more intimidating and disruptive than interrupting by raising a hand. People feel differently about verbally interrupting others; some consider it rude, and some consider it normal and expected, depending on culture, personality and personal experience. And people are affected differently by being verbally interrupted; some are fine with and appreciate it, and some have difficulty switching context and retaining their train of thought.

Raising a hand (through tooling or on video) is a way to signal a desire to interrupt which has a lower bar (easier to do) and also allows the speaker to finish their thought or sentence. It is more inclusive. When done through tooling (e.g. Zoom "Raise my hand" button) it also establishes a fair queue based on who raised their hand first. This allows the second and third person interrupting not to be forgotten; they might have a different point entirely than the first!

This change defines raising a hand as a means of "interrupting". And establishes it as the preferred method. To reduce the size of the entry, some redundant sentences were also removed.

UPDATE: The change has been modified to include raising a hand as a means of interrupting, but not to identify it as the preferred method.

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