[ticker-dev] Leakage (was Re: Latest draft)

[Ian Lister]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Bill Segall wrote:
>From a UI point of view, I currently find "leakage" to be a problem.
>Leakage seems to be a phenomenen of CBR in some ways

Not necessarily. It occurs in channel based communication too (which is
what Ticker is for the most part, anyway). As you pointed out it's largely
a UI issue, but not strictly so. For example leakage in Ticker, IRC and
other forms of IM is because either (a) you type in the same place
regardless of where you're sending your message and don't pay enough
attention to the drop-down menu or equivalent, or (b) you have several
similar windows open that you're switching between and typing in and the
wrong one has focus. (a) is easier to do, but (b) occurs even in
non-messaging scenarios e.g. typing into the wrong terminal window. Note
that other messaging systems that don't usually have the leakage problem
are because you interact with them in different ways e.g. when writing
email to mailing lists one needs to explicitly choose the destination for
each message (or reply to an existing one on the right list) and one
usually spends more time and concentration on each message than in IM.

Before I get too carried away in rambling, I'll just list a few (primarily
UI) issues that I think combine to increase the risk of leakage in Ticker:

(1) All typing goes into the same location on screen, regardless of the
    destination of the message.

(2) It can be easy to accidentally slip and choose the wrong item from a
    popup menu (much harder than when typing in a destination address).

(3) Messages are short and conversations can be fast, leading to not as
    much time spent checking over the message before sending.

(4) There is always a group selected (no requirement to explicitly select
    a group before sending, even for the first message in a thread).

...and probably a bunch of others.

Ian