1.
I was talking with Ootakamoku today and he came up with a nice idea about integrating private messages in to the chat channel format. So when one would get a private message there would be new chat channel open on the channel bar above the small graph. This would be somewhat similar to how KGS handles private messages. We would lose the ability to quickly respond to messages though.
2.
There is this “Mail” thing. I don’t understand why there is separate “Mail” as one could just use private message. If one wanted to communicate with a larger group then it might be good idea to use forums instead.
3.
Global channels should be groups. They could be just premade groups that are always visible just like they are now(one can collapse the list of course). This way there would be no need to have a separate channels(groups) for country tournaments etc. Everything would be on the same place. Moderators could then (in time) give the group admin to trustworthy people who speak the language of the channel.
4.
As an extra I have my own preferred private message system.
Put all incoming colour coded private messages to all currently open chat channels and game windows (If none are open then open “Game Lobby & Chat”) Then by typing a specific sequence of characters( I prefer “::” ) before any message a person could message the last person that has messaged you.
So one could just type “::I’m fine” to any chat anywhere in the site and the message would go to the person who privately messaged you last.
It could even remember more history about who has privately messaged you. So typing “:::I’m coming” would message the second to last person who has privately messaged you. Even better if it would automatically show the recipient when you put more : before you message. One could start to type :: and it would at that point automatically change my typed :: as :ootakamoku: and then I could continue with another : and at that point the system would remember next person on my private message queue and autofill :pupukani: as my text entry. I could keep putting “more” : in there to toggle between persons or I could just start to type my message. This way one could also just type :username:message to send any person on OGS a message.
I pretty much agree, it was a feature of the original OGS site so we created it to not lose functionality. I haven’t ran any stats to see how much it’s being used still, but I get the impression some folks still use it.
Also mail is “reliable” where as private chats can get lost and don’t stick around forever, so there is a difference.
Well that would imply that we were forcing people to join their country groups to chat and that sort of thing, which i’m not a fan of. Groups should be opt-in I think.
That would have a very normal-game-chat like feel which would be nice. I’ll keep it in mind as an option to consider when we get around to revamping the private chat system.
I’m just thinking that having multiple places to chat is not needed. Currently nobody is forcing people to join language specific “global channels” if those channels would be groups then the situation wouldn’t change in any way. The group would have more functions though. Like tournaments, news/bulleting posting, ladders and whatever get’s added later.
I see global channels as a duplicate of group channels.
I don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but it seems at least tangentially related.
the behaviour where old PMs show up every time you open a new window is an
unfortunate carryover from the old version, one that I hoped would get fixed.
since I open up OGS windows tens of times a day, its really a drag to delete the
four chats that are still open every time so I can get to the content underneath. even
though it just Satomi from two weeks ago who was bored and sent me some stuff about
his brother and the wireless connection
worse, if satomi did have some life-altering revelation, I would just keep blindly
deleting it since thats what I do all day. i’m certainly not going to open the PM
from the 30k asking advice about books 100 times to make sure he hasn’t said
anything new
so, thats more of a directed whine, and maybe there is another topic around this…but
I do think its not just a UI bug but really a discussion about what the semantics of
group chat, PMs, game chats, etc
I certainly agree with Pempu that there should be a more flexible and general group
chat mechanism which covers these cases. one example I brought up in the english
room was having a conversation that got unpinned from the game where it started
and continued on for a couple weeks.
it would also be nice to not use up a giant column in the chat window for all the
language groups…the interesting issues are naming, discovery, and when these
things fall out of scope
returning to the original whine, if I read the chat and there is no new content, please
dont draw a box at the bottom of every window I open until it times out some weeks
later
I don’t see them like that. Let’s say you make an account on OGS, and you speak language X. The first thing you (may) want to do is to comunicate with people speaking your own language. I wouldn’t even think about something more OGS-specific like joining in a group just for that. Groups are functional. Global channels are a necesity in a world with lots of languages.
What’s the difference of joining a chat channel or joining a group that has a chat channel?
With some tweaking the “global channels” would look exactly like they do now. Just that once you join them you also join a group. Another (bad) possibility is to disconnect chat channels from groups completely.
Having two different chat channels for the same language (in this case Finnish) just feels so stupid.
Why not do both here? A global language channel could be tied to a group (with certain trusted players as mods), but to join and chat there, you do not need to join the group. (Because its a global channel)
really I would just like it so that if I use private messages there isn’t a series of boxes
that I have to dismiss each time I connect which obscure the chat input window. it
would be nice if once I caught up with the private chat, I didn’t have to keep Xing those
guys away for two weeks after the conversation is finished
sorry.