Let me summarize my take on the 'don't mute' advice in this article:
* Is the call 1:1 or extremely small? If so, it's down to the preferences of the people in the call. Otherwise, for larger calls:
* Are you in a quiet environment?
* That was a trick question. You are not in a quiet environment. You think you are, because your human brain is good at filtering out background noise. Your microphone is not. You are not being forced to actually listen to what your microphone hears. The rest of us are. Mute your fucking microphone!
Some environments are actually quiet, and even silent if you sample from a boom microphone that will pick up barely any ambient sounds. Not everyone is an idiot. Forcing people to use headsets is, in my experience, more bulletproof than forcing people to mute. Our company is considering making it a policy (just like "turn on your cameras").
Ahh, but the key problem which leads me to swear and make generalizations is this: Not everyone is an idiot; but idiots don't know they're idiots. (Also, to be clear, I don't think that people who unknowingly transmit background noise on calls are idiots. Clueless, sure. Inconsiderate, sure, if someone's pointed it out and they're still doing it.)
Headsets with boom microphones (specifically) capture virtually no ambient noise because the gain on the microphone is extremely low (the relative volume of your voice picked up 1 inch from your mouth is much higher than that of anything else at the same location).
I can vacuum my house while on my bluetooth headset and people won't hear it on the other end.
* Is the call 1:1 or extremely small? If so, it's down to the preferences of the people in the call. Otherwise, for larger calls:
* Are you in a quiet environment? * That was a trick question. You are not in a quiet environment. You think you are, because your human brain is good at filtering out background noise. Your microphone is not. You are not being forced to actually listen to what your microphone hears. The rest of us are. Mute your fucking microphone!