I built that “so-and-so is typing” feature in chat (2014)
slate.com
slate.com
>And it used to be that I did. Long before instant messaging programs even existed, there was a Unix program for chatting called “talk” (and variations like “ytalk” and “ntalk”). The interface was not like that of chat programs today, where you type a message in the bottom, then hit Enter to send it over the wire to your friend. Instead, talk split the screen in half and transmitted everything you typed letter by letter. If you typed something and then deleted it, your friend would see the whole gaffe. Your text and your friend’s text were never combined into sequence.
I have to admit, i'm not sure if I share the author's enthusiasm for such a system.
It would be heavily dependent on who i'm talking to. If this were the default way of messaging with no other options, this would get a hard no from me. But, with certain people in certain situations, a modern version of this would actually be pretty nice.
Still, I wish overall there were more options for disabling things like typing indicators, read reports, constant online status indicators altogether. My biggest problem isn't so much their existence, but the inability to fully disable them in most cases.
Of course, not everyone uses Gmail, but if it loads all images whether or not they're opened, tracking pixels are much less useful.
EDIT: it looks like it doesn’t even do that, and “might even benefit email marketing, for sure not blow it up” if this isn’t out of date: https://blog.filippo.io/how-the-new-gmail-image-proxy-works-...
It wastes time when someone sends an email to a team of 5 people and they’re all independently working on the same reply.
In a real life conversation, you digest in real time as you hear the other person. You don't have to wait for chunks of their thoughts.
It felt like all the disadvantages of an in-person conversation without any of the advantages. It was such a relief when I finally convinced friends to rely more on email or chatting in places like MUDs.
And sorry to rant at you a little. It's just I can still remember the frustration vividly after 30 years.
A bit creepy and violates privacy expectations, I think.
But they don't. So I build it (draft system) for my users by saving what they type as they type it, and they are very thankful.
If you would kill my ability to build that feature, then you better replace it with a solution.
Now, if it were a normal web form, I'd feel differently, but if I've opened a support chat session, it's because I want to send the things I type to support.
I anticipate people accidentally pasting something from their clipboard that could be private/sensitive.
But much more often the person on the other end was super slow, constantly making and then slowly fixing their typos, etc. I spent most of my time getting frustrated watching them muddle through
I’ve done something similar before in Google Docs, and recently in CodiMD/HedgeDoc (which is much nicer and simpler, and doesn’t have comments except for html ones, reveal.js slide notes, and opt-in Disqus on the published doc). I think Etherpad could be used almost identically to talk, except with color coding differentiating each user instead of panes.
I had a 1200baud modem connected to my C64, and some of the time I could type faster then the transmission speed of the connection. It would be 'fun' to be able to type so fast that the computer would end up buffering the letters..words...sentences and I could watch what I had typed scroll out to the terminal. This was the single biggest motivator in learning how to touch-type.
I do know that sometimes the connection was just so poor that it wasn't because I was awesome, it was just a shitty connection. But I never let that truth get in the way of my ego. =)
Maybe the connection was bad sometimes but would it really have been so bad that an already-low-frequency modem consistently ran at less than 10% speed? My mind races thinking about the ways to configure a data stream to lose so much speed.
Not quite the same peripheral, but the 1541 disk drive was designed to be backwards compatible with older Commodore models. As a result, it had a very low read and write speed compared to other computer models. I wonder if it was a similar case for the modem.
I will always ALWAYS prefer the instantly-visible option. In a world devoid of vital visual contexts like vocal inflection and body language, a visible "stream of consciousness" is so meaningful.
There's a steadily-growing norm where people freely ignore instant-messages if responding quickly doesn't benefit them, but sometimes the message sender has no other communication recourse for an important and time-sensitive topic, and if you have no idea if they have even read your message then it's very frustrating.
Not wasting the other person's time is however super-important, and a great fast test of whether someone is considerate enough to be an online friend or not.
This "play dumb" strategy worked great for me and I think it has less risk to be perceived as "rude" compared to sending a link to the nohello.com site.
Why do you have to wait for them to type out the real message? Is there some social/messaging etiquette that I'm breaking by ... read and get back to them when I have time?
hi - can you please approve this ticket 123
hi - URGENT the website is out can you please check the DB
hi - do you want to come to the bar tonight with the team
If you just say "hi", I dont know which one its going to be. Put it in one line I know whether to pay attention or do later.
I cannot reply to all of them right away. I may be able to reply nightly with a major reduction in productivity.
I know the "seen" is a real issue. Most of the time I need to think about it.
And me personally, I'm offended if someone "sees" my message and doesn't respond. I'm sure others do too, even if I respond within 1 week.
The internet is not IRL. I manage more relationships than would be possible.
When I have an issue that's blocking me, if I don't get a response from someone within 10 minutes I'll start reaching out to other people. If I know the first person is already looking into the issue I won't waste other peoples' time.
A way to counter this is by tactfully making your boundaries of availability unabimguously and abundantly clear and intentional where you can. Once you’ve communicated this boundary, enforce it. Defend it with all your might but with discretion for when it may need bending (but not breaching).
No need to carry the burden of guilt or shame because you’re making a deliberate attempt to triage where your attention is going at a given time with so many dings, pings and alerts all yammering for our collective attentions.
I 100% agree with you that setting clear professional boundaries is a necessary thing to do. I am also of the opinion that a big part of that is to not use tattle-chat systems whenever possible, because they actively work against exactly this. Or, to put it another way, refusing to use a system like this is to actively choose to reduce the number of dings, pings and alerts for both yourself and everyone you communicate with. Win-win!
I empathize, while realizing many don't have a say in what system their employer uses, which probably (I'm not sure) adds emphasis to if not further necessitates the clear definition of and enforcement of these kinds of boundaries.
I suspect for many people who are new to working from home to the extent that many of us have been for so long now, deliberate practice of this will be very difficult and a little painful at first. But like exercise of the body, the exercise and diplomatic deployment of these boundaries gets stronger and you learn new ways to use it without injury while reaping great outcomes with the people around you.
After doing that I noticed the function actaully sent the message "etc etc is typing..." and you could change that message to arbitrary strings. Unaltered clients then display the arbitrary string instead of a "is typing" one.
I solve it by configuring slack to send me email notifications and then close the tab. I'll check email only a couple times a day, I'll see it then and open a slack tab to respond, if needed.
I quit that stupid job.
P.S. I still believe (... though it may be overly complex) that a group of users should be able to opt-in to this mode. But by default, and perhaps on a timeout, it is disabled.
It's the person who invented Read Receipts that really needs to apologize.
Our message app (Sococo) was rigorous about sending activity messages, from peer to peer. Not periodically; just when typing began or 'timed out', or when focus was gained or lost (desktop app). So a minimum of messages got sent, not the barrage of ping-style message the other guys sent.
I don't remember if it actually made it into production, but it was rolled out to employees for dogfooding. It was the worst thing ever, especially since we were forced to use it for internal communications.
He may actually be deeply conflicted but this is a defense mechanism.
There's a lot wrong with online social features... points at the global echo chambers, the depression and anxiety epidemic, the broken dating scene, and toxicity of online discourse
I don't blame the people that made it, they're innovators that quite literally had no idea what they were doing - or the bottom line of the stakeholders got in the way. So, in my opinion the author did nothing wrong, and has no reason to apologize.
However, it would be nice to start a conversation on how to fix these problems instead of pretending they're not there.
HN made some great choices in its features that makes it a much better place to read and engage in comments than probably 99% of the rest of the internet. Those innovations include small things like not being able to downvote direct replies to your comments, having downvoting locked behind a reputation score, etc. It seems like these features were added intuitively, which is fine but risky.
The author mentions that essentially, the problem with their feature is that it doesn't go far enough. I'd like to ask them how they've come to that conclusion. Do they just assume that? Did they do research?
We really have no idea how to build new forms of communication. The only other ubiquitous forms, besides what we've evolved with, are writing and telephone communication. Both of those have their awkwardness, and therefore have established rules to make communication go more smoothly. Writing has had millennia to iron itself out, and we mostly got lucky with telephones but there definitely are still problems with it.
The internet and all related technologies are a revolution in communication, yet no one has considered that maybe, just maybe, we need to really take care to do it properly?
Where are the institutions and committees for research and creation of standards that make sure to foster at least healthier communication online?
And I’m always skeptical of these “I invented it” type posts. The talk command on Unix actually allowed you to see what the other person was typing in real time, letter by letter.
the author mentions this in the article.
I’ve never used a ‘live’ chat like he describes but I really like the idea. Is there anything modern that provides that?
I've never actually had this happen to me, but I nonetheless fear it will 100% of the time I start typing something and then delete it. In any IM application that has a typing indicator (especially Slack at work -- I shudder at the thought of typing out a long message in #general), I've taken to drafting messages that require any non-trivial degree of thought to type in a separate box, e.g. a message to myself, and then copy-pasting it into the actual chat.
Sure, other people still see that I type stuff, but this in and of itself is rarely the problem for me. My problem is my anxiety around knowing they get a notification when I'm typing. That goes away when I don't see that others are typing.
Was fun to say “hi” while someone was writing an initial message to you.
Dunno why I told my friend that her sister often opened a window (to see my picture presumably) without ever sending a word...
Now these articles start with him taking the 'blame'.
It feels so... like a new world... where most people are offended and angry by every tiny little annoyance of modern life. Where being angry and pessimistic is almost fashionable. Complaining about life, feeling hopeless, prophesizing disaster and externalizing problems is something people do to 'brag'.
I feel schools should include a decent amount of volunteering with people who have real problems. Maybe that way the next generation won't be so quick to focus on the negative. We're living in the best of times by all objective measurements.
Moaning about the one before is also popular. I have a pet theory that the reason that we hear so much about the offences of the boomers and millennials is that leadership positions are mostly gen x right now (when did you last hear anything about gen x?) In a couple of decades everyone will be complaining about gen x and gen z, instead.