Yeah Yahoo IM had that, but they used different servers for the 'activity' messages and the actual text. So you could get the "typing" indication after you had received the message. It was often out of order, and very confusing.
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.
Near the end of Yahoo Messenger, they were planning on releasing live-typing as the default, with no option to turn it off (the other person saw what you were typing as you typed it).
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.
>I’d rather know what the other person were typing as she typed it.
>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.
(as long as you your client doesn’t load tracking pixels wrong) Edit: the article: “Gmail tells you if your friend is typing, and whether there’s any text left in the box.”
I loved this feature when I first experienced it in Google Wave. I don't think it belongs everywhere, but exactly as the article author says, it makes the conversation feel smoother and more like I am actually talking to someone in real life because I can think about what they are saying as they are typing it.
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.
(Talking about Google Wave) I liked it in theory! In practice it felt super awkward and almost privacy-invasive, but I think that's because we weren't use to it. If it became commonplace, it would ultimately seem more natural.
I never used Wave much, but I'm old enough to have used (the shell program) Talk many, many times to communicate with my friends on the university system. I really hated the live typing feature. In order not to seem rude, you had to focus on the conversation so you were ready to respond as soon as the other person was done. You had to be patient with the typos and slow typing of some people. And even if the deleted parts of the conversation had relevant information, you had to at least pretend to ignore whatever was typed & deleted. It had all the limitations of online communication (no facial cues, no body language, no tone of voice) but didn't have the good grace to be asynchronous which would let you do more than one thing at a time. It was so frustrating to be stuck in one place staring at letter after letter slowly appearing.
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.
Lots of "Live chat" customer-support type systems do it this way. You can see what your prospective customers are typing as they type. Every character, backspace, etc.
A bit creepy and violates privacy expectations, I think.
Do what? I would have been surprised if this wasn't the case. Websites see every keystroke you make while their targeted. People should realize that. If they don't, they're in for some rude surprises.
The browsers could buffer the text in text fields until the field loses focus (clicked another field or submit) or hit enter. It would break search-as-you-type functionality, but not the biggest loss in the world.
There's always the option of typing your stuff in another program entirely and copy/pasting. Sure, not everyone would be willing to do that, but it's really not that inconvenient if you know your keyboard shortcuts (ctrl+a, ctrl+c, alt+tab, ctrl+v in that order, easy for a competent computer user). And socially anxious people may be more comfortable with that overall.
Copy+paste won't trigger keyboard events to my knowledge. So if the page was just simulating a text input field, paste wouldn't work. (Which would cause issues e.g. pasting account numbers to be fair.)
There are quite a few browser extensions that make this easier. The best is Pentadactyl, a complete UI overhaul for vi bindings everywhere that lets you hit Control + i to open any text field in any (blocking) external editor (gvim -f by default), so you can type out your message and then type ZZ to send all the text to the field at once. However, it’s only for XUL browsers. I think there are also WebExtensions that offer similar external editor support, but when I use browsers limited to them I use wasavi, which pops up a javascript-powered vi clone inside the browser (but still only sends the text down to the area when you save). IIRC SurfingKeys also has a similar thing, with a codemirror-based editor that’s IME more limited than wasavi. Of course none of these work on exceptionally complicated things like Google Docs, but they often work on simpler WYSIWYG rich text areas, and wasavi and maybe SurfingKeys even support converting the HTML within them to Markdown while editing, and back when you save.
Browsers already have good UX reasons to do something like this. They should offer version history on textareas, for example, so you don't need to ever worry about losing state.
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.
I once realized this was happening when the customer service rep was replying to me almost immediately after I hit send. Initially I was like how the hell did you reply/type this fast, but it dawned on me after a few more messages.
I used Verizon's recently, and it was actually forthcoming about this. I think it was part of the text content shown when the connection began (after the annoying pre-chat Q&A during which they try to convince you they can solve your problem without involving a human).
Not sure I get the outrage to this one. Do you anticipate typing private info, backspacing, then replacing it with some bland query about switching internet plans? The only time I might have minded true real-time chat was in grade school talking to girls I fancied, but other than that, it makes a lot of sense. Saves time for the support agent and if they get a computer illiterate customer typing at 1 WPM who doesn't know to use enter to send, they can at least try to help.
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.
The live feed of talk/ytalk/etc was a mixed bag. If the person you were chatting with was a decent typist it was great as you could process what they were writing as they were typing.
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
> in certain situations, a modern version of this would actually be pretty nice
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. =)
I wonder what kind of overhead you were dealing with there. As raw characters that would be at least 120 per second. If you send a TCP packet every second it would hold 80.
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.
> 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.
If you want to hide the writing process, there's always email (and other solutions).
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.
I hated the behavior then, I hate it now, and will continue to despise it in the future. I am not being hyperbolic in my adjective choice. I have seen real work drama over this sort of thing, because people misinterpret the 'is-typing' as 'is-paying-attention-to-me', and the inevitable long delays, short replies, forced focusing on waiting for someone to finish... It is an anti-social antipattern from beginning to end.
I think a big part of the problem is that the feature's implementation doesn't always align with the author's intended drafting / published status. The feature just picks the closest outcome that happens to be measurable (e.g. "author typed in draft box in the last 0.5s" or "draft box is not empty string") without regarding how a notification of that measure maps to the social dynamics of IM communication.
Both that and the read status destroyed the charm of chat to me. Before I could be fast or take 2 days to answer but it would mean that I would take my time to do a proper answer. Now it means I'll ignore messages for a bigger period because I don't want the other person to see that I read them, and then I'll right much faster because I don't want to person to see 6 interrupted "... is typing".
This is especially difficult when receiving messages you can't immediately deal with. Yes I'm online, and yes I saw your message, but now is not a good moment. No I don't hate you, I'm just not currently available. I hate having to tiptoe around the notification to avoid marking it as read.
I usually just respond with "Hmmm, let me dig into that". That gives me time to do my research and get back to them. It also shows them that I'm actually looking into it, rather than that I forgot about the message.
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.
I have seen real work drama over this sort of thing, because people misinterpret the 'is-typing' as 'is-paying-attention-to-me'
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.
>Once you’ve communicated this boundary, enforce it.
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 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.
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.
I hated it in the open source chat application Retroshare so much that instead of using a pre-compiled version I edited the source to disable the activity send notifications from my client.
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.
Agreed, it is very inconsiderate of people's time. The expectation that I'm here sitting all day watching and responding on the chat window is not good.
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.
It makes you feel like once you start typing something, you have to at least send something, even if you change your mind about replying.
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.
I dont mind that, what drives me nuts is the people who say "hi", then wait for you to say "hi", then they start typing the message they wanted to send, taking 5 minutes to write a short essay, while you're sitting there distracted and waiting.
Yeah they should redesign that website to be a single simple page with the content of that unique blog post. It's a bit ironic that they don't get straight to the point.
I like it. But in the second example they've already finished typing the whole question by the time they said Hi in the first.. then we're told the second way finishes "minutes sooner"? Hmm. That appears to make no sense.
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.
I remember facing this situation a couple of times and all I did was ignore the initial "Hi", after a long time my interlocutor would insist "Hi? Are you there?"; and then I would finally reply "Yes! I just thought you would continue to write your message and I was waiting".
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.
I think this is often used when the person could save minutes of work if you're around to give some knowledge, but if you're not they'll go ahead and research it. No point in them or you spending more time typing if the connection can't be made in the moment.
I agree. I have a coworker who does this on the phone too. "Hey, how are you?", ugh. Look, you didn't call me and interrupt whatever I was doing to chit chat, tell me what the damned problem is.
Agreed. If I want to talk to you, we can do that once we discuss why you called. I know you really aren't interested in what you are asking me, you are getting ready to ask me the real question.
I hear a lot of people express this sentiment, and I honestly don't fully understand the frustration.
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?
They've already potentially interrupted you by sending you that "hi". But the "hi" contains zero content. And worst of all, they often wait for your reply, which means you have to actually do something to get them to tell you what they wanted to tell you.
If you say straight away what you're writing about I can decide how important it is and if I should interrupt my current task. I'd rather see something like:
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.
It's like they want to pretend they had anything to offer in the conversation. They want to hide the fact that all they had was a question. All they ever have is questions.
I seem to remember that on one of the chat services, there was a trick to see what the other person was typing before they hit Enter. Something like the client actually sent updates as the other user typed, and your client would receive it, but not display it until the message was marked "sent"... but third-party clients could just show you the in-progress messages. Anyone remember this?
Pidgin has a psychic mode plugin, that would open a window from the sender as if they had sent a message, while they were typing. I used it mainly for icq, it was quite funny surprising people with it.
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?
On the other hand, I want to buy a beer for whoever invented "email recall" messages, because they have given me a great deal of entertainment over the years. Pretty much the only way to get me to read one of the constant HR/Health & Wellness/Safety/whatever emails that deluged us in my previous job... if I see a recall message, I'm going through the original with a fine-toothed comb.
I don’t mind this behaviour. It can be difficult to coordinate when you don’t know whether the other person is done yet or not. Back in the old days we used to, as the end of the article says, send lots of little bits of text to deal with this (to older/less internet-savvy people’s great annoyance, as they treated chat just like email, and would be furious when their wall of text was responded to with half a sentence!) but it made the chat very disjointed and you’d end up having to deal with multiple simultaneous stands of conversation. Anyway, the real problem is people who ask “what were you typing?” when you delete your message or take a long time. You don’t want to know!
I’ve never used a ‘live’ chat like he describes but I really like the idea. Is there anything modern that provides that?
> Anyway, the real problem is people who ask “what were you typing?” when you delete your message. That seems so rude to me!
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.
Here's what I do: I disable the typing notification locally whenever possible (for example in Slack). Since I'm never reminded of its existence, I honestly had completely forgotten it existed. Makes things much easier.
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.
I find it interesting that when I was growing up, the person who invented the typing notification feature would have presented it as an achievement.
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.
And that the one after was the worst. Moaning about the youth today goes back to at least the ancient Greeks.
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.
Back when I worked at Apple, I opened a somewhat detailed issue against the messaging application trying to explain some of the mental health implications of "the dot dot dots". Sadly, the issue was moved somewhere I didn't have access, and surely ignored.
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.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 184 ms ] threadOur 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.
>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.
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.
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.
FYI: I know most of the celebrity nerds in Silicon Valley, and generally the technical origin stories you hear about are actually true.
The most inaccurate stories are around who cofounders are - one is invariably "left out" later on. (See the recent reddit news.)
Because of my knowledge of above, when I worked at a unicorn and saw a slide listing 4 cofounders, and asked where the 4th one was, got silence. :)
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.
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...
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?
It's the person who invented Read Receipts that really needs to apologize.
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.
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.
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.