Group chat sucks for programmers, so I'm fixing the problem | Hacker News Reader

Group chat sucks for programmers, so I'm fixing the problem

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getting people to be disciplined about using it will be the hardest part.

i still get emails from people who just keep replying to the last email, regardless of whether the new topic matches the previous email (which was from days or weeks ago).

so you're saying I should add achievements :)

"CONVERSATION CRUSHER - 5 Points - create 5 conversations in one day"

I think a lot of the discipline here will come from people training themselves as they realize they aren't being efficient with their usage of the program. This idea allows for more fine tuning of your habits. Where the IRC-style room-based chats are quite static in nature, this idea seems to allow for more dynamic allocation of what you choose to watch. I like the idea. It would be tough to roll my team over to it, but I could see something like a Slack add-on with similar functionality being something I would use!

ew you said the S word

seriously though, thanks for the kind words :)

Haha, hey, it was enough effort to convince them all to move from SKYPE + IRC, so I am proud of that accomplishment. But yeah, keep it up! Will definitely be watching this project. :)

We've tried "topic" rooms many times but most conversation still goes back to "general interface" rooms between teams, which requires all of the scrolling up. It seems to be the "persistency" of rooms that grabs you - after a while those old rooms become dead and you start to assume no "up to date" information is in them.

Its much closer to a forum post than a chat - it kinda brings up an idea of a "modern" forum for ideas - vBulletin style forums are so ubiquitous and "old" feeling it would put people off, but with modern extensive UIs it could be a great experience.

that's the idea behind it :-)

I think conversations are like most living things

they're born, they live their life, and then they die

so I just tried to capture that idea in software-form

tons of conversations that don't stray off-topic, with an easy way to search for their remnants in the future

---------------

I think email/forums are already more ideal than the group chat tools out there, they just come with the downside of having to refresh the page constantly, and usually have poor formatting options

so I just tried to merge the best parts of both applications together :)

We're playing around with these concepts in Discourse as well:

https://meta.discourse.org/t/speccing-out-a-full-page-chat-p...

You're very welcome to join the discussion/development! Send an email to erlend@discourse.org if you wanna bounce some ideas around.

I do agree - I've seen a huge move of my social groups to move towards IRC-style chat rooms (Telegram specifically) and it actually becomes extremely difficult to organize "real-life" meetups on them (you can pin a meetup if its "public" to the group you're in, or create another group... that has no expiration date). This creates a system where "the group" becomes a system to be managed in itself, rather than a conversation that people can pop into and out of whenever their interests align or not.

Emphasizing the "fluidity" of real conversations and social groups and just how ideas pop up and die down seems a great benefit - I'd love to work on something like that.

So basicly like a Bulletin Board or 'Discourse'. I think giving everything a Subject line is to much work, at least in some cases.

me too :-)

that's the idea behind being able to pin conversations

----------

you're in 4 conversations:

"PINNED: #development"

"PINNED: off-topic chatter"

"we should replace angular with react"

"design discussion about new mock-up"

-----------

the benefits of long running channels (pinned conversations), while still being able to break important conversations out into their own context (making them easy to find later)

So you mean instead of an Admin pinning it for all Channel Members. Everyone can Pin Messages but only in their own personal view?

yeah

I don't have any strong preference with either option, the latter just seemed more flexible

Kind of reminds me of a way simpler version of https://zulip.org/

I can see that

definitely not doing anything super innovative here -- just trying to cross all my T's and dot all my I's when it comes to coming up with a UI that gets out of the way :)

Yeah! Wasn't trying to discount anything you are doing, just sharing in case it gives you some inspiration or ideas :)

You seem like an awesome fun dude and your video made me laugh a few times. Hope to see more from you!

more comments in the reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/596sh0/group_c...

This doesn't seem to be very different from IRC with narrowly-scoped channels.

it's not that different at all

it's (hopefully) just a little easier to work with :)

(especially for designers / QA people / salespeople / managers who don't know what IRC stands for)

This looks interesting :)

:-)

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