Maybe a crazy, big brotherish idea, but a colleague mentioned that she is missing a whatsapp feature she has come to rely on - delivered and read ticks/checks next to names of people in messages she is communicating with. We often use discourse messages and posts with @ mentions to communicate directly with people about activities and events in our community, and it’s super frustrating to not know if they even saw it when trying to follow up with folks.. to the point that colleagues ask me to look in mandrill to see if they got the email and opened it.
I know discourse tracks info like this, but am not sure how to readily get access it in the service of stewarding community engagement. Some system of indicating delivered and read status would be very valuable, e.g. on the popup user card when selecting a user’s avatar in a conversation? It could be controlled via an admin setting, e.g. to disable entirely, display only for staff, or display to all members?
What do the ticks mean in WhatsApp?
WhatsApp uses a system of ticks to indicate different statuses of messages you send. The ticks will be visible at the bottom right hand corner of the message speech bubble, next to the time stamp. One grey tick means that the message has been sent successfully. Two grey ticks means that the message has been delivered successfully to the recipient’s phone. If the two ticks turn blue, that means that the message has been read.
That works in WhatsApp as each user has a single device. Messages are only delivered into an app, and besides skimming the notification previews you can’t “read” a message without opening it.
Discourse OTOH is all about users accessing from multiple endpoints, some of the ways to consume such as email couldn’t convey a read state if you wanted to.
I wouldn’t mind a “read up until” notification for Messages, but it would need a huge disclaimer that it’s not an infallible measure.
A work-around is to make “liking” a post an indicator that you’ve seen it. This puts the “I’ve seen the message” in the court of the receiver (and doesn’t require any changes to Discourse).
This all makes sense.. thanks, both. We use the “liking” as well, but with very mixed results. The 150+ colleagues in my organization around the world are just not disciplined about logging in and using the like even when asked to add a like to confirm receipt.
Ultimately there is a lack of confidence in discourse for time sensitive communications and people are reverting to just using email, slack, whatsapp etc to communicate. This is a shame because it means we are not using discourse as much as we should be!
To take a classic example. When we organize webinars, we start a message with everyone involved to gather the required info and take care of logistical details. Unfortunately it often happens that weeks go by without a response, and then we have to follow up via another channel because we need to get the webinar on the calendar, line up a mailer, etc. Then because we get the response we need there we abandon the discourse message, or end up updating two places. Three, really, because we also use a separate project management system to plan everything that has to happen to pull off a webinar. Comedy ensues when we have 3-5 presenters involved, and have to use different channels to reach all of them.
A “read up until” indication in the user card would indeed be helpful to give us all confidence that it’s worth updating the messages, or at least some sort of indicator that the people in the message are actually reading the message or topic at all. A percentage?
I think Hangouts and Facebook messenger does a good job just by dropping user icons at the bottom of the message a user has read up until, but that’s the domain of IM with a limited audience, not structured discussion.
You could easily incentivize bad behavior here. If someone isn’t choosing to read a topic and it’s just made mandatory they’re going to scroll through the topic to fufil the requirement and bypass the content entirely.
One trick I’ve used previously is badges, for any mandatory training stuff we issue a badge per topic for reading the OP. Then if someone doesn’t do something correctly we can check to see if they reviewed the required training materials before they attempted the task.
What’s the consequence if they don’t read the topics? Do they miss out, or does it impact the overall community? Is there sufficient incentive for them to remain up to date?
I’ve never seen that - but then I haven’t use facebook or hangouts for years. I do use slack though so will see what slack is doing.
Like I explained above, the consequence is that engagement is moving out of discourse, which causes us to have to keep track of conversations in lots of difference places, and slows down activity on the forum. It also puts a squeeze on organizing events because we don’t hear back from people early enough. This hurry up and wait cycle occurs too often and is stress inducing!
One thought I’m having is that we can work harder on onboarding, to make sure that people we work with on events (like webinars) are full members of the network and logging in regularly. This is an area we tend to neglect because we have a small staff. But for events we do tend to have logistical calls and we can reserve time during those calls to log into discourse together and make sure they know their way around, and actually show them the message we use for communicating about the event and ask them to reply to it to show us that they know how it works and are there.
I don’t know what’s technically feasible and what the discourse team are interested in providing, but I can’t help but think the “read up until” would really help to increase confidence in discourse as a communication tool across the board.
BTW, I also am impressed by the whatsapp group messaging feature that indicates when everyone in the group has received a message. Pretty cool! From the blog post:
WhatsApp’s tick system also works on group messages. If you have sent a message to a group, the double grey tick will appear when all of the group has received your message. Likewise, the ticks will turn blue only when everyone in the group has read your message.
We have considered a “read until” kind of thing for group messages, so group members can tell which other group member read stuff, but its more in the “we are thinking about it” phase vs the “we are going to build it phase”.
I think one of the biggest factor of Whatsapp’s popularity is that sender of the msg knows (in most cases) whether (and when) user has received/read the msg or not. It gives him confidence, and in some cases, proof, that the user has read the msg.
It helps to clear the doubt from the minds of the both- sender and receiver of the msg. (because receiver doesn’t have to send acknowledgement to the sender that he has read the msg and thus now knows)
If someone would want to show that he has read a particular msg, even when he has not, it is to his own disadvantage I think.
Note: I know, I may not even know even 1% as you all guys do. But since this is all about sharing one’s thoughts, howsoever small, I couldn’t help myself but chipping in.
Clicking the like button is an easy way to acknowledge that you have seen a message. In the case of a direct message it is generally clear that a like likely means more that the person has seen the message than they necessarily approved of it.
That’s the case when receiver wants to show that he has read the msg.
But when sender wants to know for sure, but receiver isn’t interested in acknowledging, that’s the point I wanted to talk about.
N: I’ve read the receiver could read the msg in the email and yet sender won’t know, but that needs a deliberate action from the receiver to perform every time he wanted to cheat someone.
Except email, he has to read the msg from the web server, there is no third way.
Discourse isn’t email (and email doesn’t really do this, anyway), and it isn’t a chat or instant messaging system. So the request generally doesn’t fit what the software is designed to do.
@BobbyZopfan님과 저의 의견이 일치하는 것 같습니다. 인터넷 접근성과 통신이 어려운 지역의 일부에서 WhatsApp은 이미 큰 영향력을 행사하기 시작했습니다. 그들의 성공의 큰 부분은 메시징의 즉각성과 ‘전달됨’ 및 ‘읽음’ 알림이라고 생각합니다. 이는 사람들이 자신의 메시지가 실제로 확인되고 있다는 점을 안심시켜 줍니다.
이 기능은 정말 마음에 들고, ‘고려’ 단계에서 ‘구현’ 단계로 넘어가길 희망합니다. 제 경우라면 그룹 메시징보다는 특정 주제(Topic) 내에서 이 기능이 가장 중요할 것 같습니다. (다른 이유들로 인해) 우리는 여전히 그룹 메시징을 피하고 있으니까요.
제 요청은 이메일에 관한 것이 아니라, '전달됨’과 ‘읽음’ 알림 측면에서 WhatsApp과 동등한 기능을 갖추는 것이었습니다. Discourse의 작동 방식상(고맙습니다, @Stephen!) 이 기능이 간단하지 않다는 점, 그리고 대부분의 Discourse 커뮤니티에는 적합하지 않을 수 있다는 점(개인정보 보호 문제 등)을 이제 이해했습니다.
아마도 각 주제에 기여했거나 언급된 사용자의 사용자 카드에서 ‘읽은 위치까지’ 정보를 제공하는 플러그인이나 테마 컴포넌트를 고려해 볼 수 있을 것 같습니다. 이는 카테고리별로 활성화할 수 있으며, 물류 관련 사항이 논의되는 특정 카테고리에서만 사용하도록 할 수도 있습니다. 또는 다른 접근 방식으로, OP(첫 번째 게시물)에 마크다운을 추가하여(DiscoTOC처럼) 주제를 읽은 멤버 목록과 읽은 진행 정도를 표시하는 방법도 있을 것입니다. 확신은 없습니다.
참고로, 오늘 답변을 드리는 이유는 방금 Loomio로부터 Loomio 2.0 버전 출시를 알리는 이메일을 받았기 때문입니다. ‘읽음(Seen by)’ 및 ‘알림 히스토리’ 기능이 추가된 것으로 보입니다.
와, 정말 멋지네요! 어떻게 접근할 수 있나요? 지금까지 그룹 메시지에서는 찾지 못했습니다. 하지만 말씀드린 대로, 우리는 일반적으로 그룹 메시지보다는 개인 카테고리에 의존합니다.
그렇다면 정확히 어떤 프라이버시 문제가 있나요? 카테고리 수준이나 접근 권한을 기반으로 이를 해결할 수 있을까요? 공개 카테고리에서는 우려 사항이 될 수 있지만, 서로 긴밀하게 협력하는 사람들 사이의 개인 카테고리는 어떻게 될까요? 그렇지 않으면 이메일이나 WhatsApp으로 전환하게 될 텐데 말입니다.
일단 그룹 메시지 컨텍스트에서 이 기능을 조금 사용해 보는 건 어떨까요? 그룹에 On group messages publish group read state(그룹 메시지 게시 시 그룹 읽음 상태 게시) 옵션이 아래 그림처럼 체크되어 있고, 그룹으로 메시지를 시작하면 해당 기능이 "그냥 작동"한다고 생각합니다.
Discourse는 "읽음"과 "열람"을 어떻게 구분하나요? 해당 기능이 화면에 머문 시간, 접근 여부, 또는 다른 무언가를 추적하나요?
이는 전달됨, 열람됨, 읽음 알림이나 구분 기준 전반에 걸린 더 큰 문제입니다.
저는 여러 플랫폼과 서비스에서 메시지를 종종 한눈에 훑어보는데, 이는 제가 메시지를 실제로 읽었다는 것을 전혀 의미하지 않습니다.
@tobiaseigen과@BobbyZopfan에게 중요한 요소였던 것으로 보이는 책임 소재 측면에서, 수신자가 "좋아요"를 누르거나( *pfaffman이 언급했듯이) Facebook 그룹 단위에서처럼 “완료”(또는 “읽음”, “확인” 등)를 클릭하는 등 능동적 조치를 취하기 전까지는 아무것도 확정되지 않습니다. 그때가 되면 수신자가 메시지를 실제로 “읽었는지” 여부는 중요하지 않습니다–앞으로 그 정보에 대한 책임을 능동적으로 인정했기 때문입니다.
그룹 메시지에서의 이러한 기능은 의도대로 작동하려면 커뮤니티 규범과 함께 사용되어야 합니다.
항상 그렇듯, “읽음” /=/ “이해함” 또는 "동의함"입니다.
pfaffman, 죄송합니다. 답글 봇에 따르면 게시물에서 2명의 사용자만 언급할 수 있습니다.
제 경우라면 그룹 메시징보다는 특정 주제(Topic) 내에서 이 기능이 가장 중요할 것 같습니다. (다른 이유들로 인해) 우리는 여전히 그룹 메시징을 피하고 있으니까요.
Discourse는 "읽음"과 "열람"을 어떻게 구분하나요? 해당 기능이 화면에 머문 시간, 접근 여부, 또는 다른 무언가를 추적하나요?
