[ticker-dev] Re: channel subscription rules

[Phillips, Matthew]

>   Matthew> I think it's possible, likely even, that some of the people
>   Matthew> on this list who have been using ticker from The Beginning,
>   Matthew> and now have it built into their limbic reflexes, don't
>   Matthew> fully appreciate how much _integrated_ presence adds to the
>   Matthew> way tickertape works.
> 
> That's quite possible.
> 
> I've seen integrated presence in things like AIM/iChat/GAIM (where you
> get "replying" status, etc) and used it a little in sticker.  
> 
> I also used epm for a while too.

epm is kind of a one way client: you can see information about others, but it doesn't generate much in the way of useful information ;) I remember Ian had an epm running that claimed he had been active continuously for 2 months (I think he later said he'd lost track of where it was actually running!)

>   Matthew> It's not just a new feature tacked on the side: it makes a
>   Matthew> significant difference to be able to see what channels are
>   Matthew> being used or who's listening to a given channel, and hence
>   Matthew> the minimum audience for a message.
> 
> For me, that's not *normally* something I need to know.  Sometimes it
> would be handy -- eliminating the "Foo, are you there?" messages --
> but mostly I know who listens to what channels.

You'd know who's *active* on a given channel, but not about lurkers (in the good sense) and people who usually are online there but aren't right now. Having visiblilty of existing channels allows newbies to get up to speed quickly.

>   Matthew> Being able to see a person is there and send them a message
>   Matthew> directly (and being warned if they're offline or away) is
>   Matthew> also a key new feature and used a lot here at DSTO:
>   Matthew> probably more than 80% of the chat traffic here is
>   Matthew> person-to-person (for reference, we have about 25-30
>   Matthew> regular users right now).
> 
> I have some traffic that is person-to-person.  It uses specific
> channels, but could just as easily use personal channels and
> out-of-group threads.
> 
> But most of my traffic is shared because I find it beneficial to have
> other people peripherally aware of what I'm asking/saying.  This
> extends to persistent logging as well.  For example, a lot of the
> traffic on the "dev" channel at Mantara could easily be
> person-to-person, but it's handy for other people to see it a lot of
> the time and it means it gets logged so that it can be looked up later
> as well.

I guess this is a matter of preference, but there are times when if I didn't have the p2p option I wouldn't have posted the message at all to a shared channel because of the annoyance value involved to everyone else to whom the message might not even make sense let.

>   Matthew> Other things, such as being able to see that someone is
>   Matthew> "Replying..." allows you to stop "talking over" them or to
>   Matthew> see that they probably saw the message you just sent them.
> 
> I'm not really convinced about this, I must say.  I know it's common
> in IM apps, but I don't normally find it that useful.  Presumably its
> prevalence means other people do though.

The scenario where this pays off is where you post a message to a group and then see several people go to "replying" status. This means that people have (a) seen it and (b) there's some interest in what you said ;) It makes a difference to know you're not posting into a void.

As a side note: I've recently added the option to generate short-lived ticker notifications for selected people when they come online, which is turning out to be an excellent way to acheive peripheral awareness.

>   Matthew> By doing fairly simple things like putting presence roster
>   Matthew> displays in the messages window and displaying known groups
>   Matthew> in the ticker group subscription widget you can gain a
>   Matthew> great deal of situational awareness.
> 
> I think this display in Sticker in some ways *reduces* my peronsal
> awareness: without an explicit display, I am reliant on awareness
> gained implicitly, and so I am more (sub-consciously) focussed on such
> cues.

What clues?

>   Matthew> I realise that there may actually be no effort available to
>   Matthew> add presence support to, say, xtickertape but if there
>   Matthew> were, even integrating a minimum implementation would make
>   Matthew> a big difference methinks.
> 
> There are probably two aspects to this: publishing information, and
> display information.
> 
> Personally, I'm quite content that XTickertape doesn't display
> presence information like Sticker does: it really doesn't fit into the
> way I use the interface.
> 
> But I wouldn't mind if it provided such information for those who
> wanted to use it.

That would be great. Ticker groups and idle/active presence would be very useful.

Cheers,

Matt.