this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
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Lemmy

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Feature idea: Chat mode for selected posts (lemmy.ml)
submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by maegul@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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Seen some conversations recently about taking a general discussion thread here onto discord/matrix for "real time chat".

It then struck me, as someone who's been on lemmy since before the Reddit API migration ... that lemmy used to be more "real time" than it is now with the front-end receiving updates over websockets.

Coupled with the "chat" sort for comments (which is buggy I think), you could turn any post into a live chat.

Obviously you wouldn't want too many of these as they burden the backend. But it could be a nice feature, using mostly old lemmy tech (?), to allow selected posts to become "live chats".

It would probably make sense to add time limits for how long this can be on for, and maybe to add limits for how many posts per community ... all configurable by admins. But also it could make mega-threads and free-form discussions much more dynamic and attractive here.

EDIT:

There could be both user-specific and post-specific modes for this too.

Any particular user could be able to turn on chat mode for them, so that comments are flattened and updates happen automatically, but just for them. Limiting this in someway on a user based would make sense.

Then a particular post could be put into "chat mode", such that everybody who opens the post does so in "chat mode" automatically, unless they opt out. Again, limitations on how many posts and for long they stay in "chat mode" make sense here.

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[–] Steve@communick.news 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't know why some people seem to frequently want something to be something else.
When one service tries to incorporate multiple (and very different) modes of interactions, it always suffers.

Lemmy isn't a chat room. If you want a live discussion you go to Discord or Matrix. Lemmy isn't that. It shouldn't be that. I remember when the Lemmy feed would constantly update. Even when It was working properly, it was extremely annoying. Lets let Lemmy be Lemmy. And if you want to engage with people in a different way, go to a service that was designed for it. Specialization is a good thing.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Feature creep is obviously a problem. On that I hear you.

But counterpoint …

I don’t know why some people seem to think the internet was perfected at some point in the 2010s and that nothing should be changed from that era’s platform designs. (Actually we can make a pretty good guess but that’s not really the point)

New things are possible. Better things too. A single online space need not be brutalist in its commitment to one form of interaction. At some point, this design was just made up … there’s nothing necessarily wrong with making up new things.

All of which is not to mention that we’re having this conversation on the fediverse, which is new to the point that many don’t understand it or think it’s simply a bad idea.

A better approach, IMO, would be to start from purposes and social media experiences.

Where I’m coming from here isn’t about just incorporating everything into lemmy. I’m not trying to make lemmy a discord or whatever.

I’m coming from the perspective of how to build and facilitate communities, the generic normal kind (something I think the fediverse could do better at especially as I think that it’s the fediverse’s natural strength).

A discussion on lemmy that spontaneously makes sense as a real-time chat … which happens … immediately runs into fatal levels of friction when that requires organising discord/matrix etc.

If it were just a button … that would be awesome. That would then allow people to communicate and share ideas more effectively … which would be awesome. This would then build better communities here … which would be awesome.

You might not like it, which is why I was careful to outline the limits and opt-in mechanics. That doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t have it.

[–] Steve@communick.news 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

New things can and should be built.
New things.

Taking something that's currently good at what it does, and changing it to do something substantially new doesn't work.

Google would have been better off, if they created a new service to emulate TickTock rather than shoehorn TickTock videos into YouTube.

They created Inbox to try to redesign email, rather than mess with how Gmail worked. That was absolutely the right way to do it.

That's what your talking about here. Rather than adapt Lemmy to your new idea. Create an entirely new system expressly designed for it. That would really be making something new.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 4 points 9 months ago

Sure. Except I don’t think I’m suggesting anything shoehorned here at all.

I’m talking about a flattened comments section sorted by new that automatically updates itself in some fashion (where even just a badge with the number of new comments would be sufficient). The pieces and behaviour were basically there already, it’s very similar to older forums, and introduces hardly any changes.

People already have basicalky real time conversations here (and on Reddit), just like we are now. I’m talking about enabling users to ease the friction of that. I don’t think it would be a big deal at all from a UX perspective.

If it were such a radically different platform, so what? Lemmy and the fediverse are all new and still in version 0.x. Version 0.20 could introduce a bunch of new stuff. Just like decentralisation is “new”. Just like the coming local only and private communities in lemmy are new. Plus anything that’s opt-in shouldn’t be a problem anyway. Requiring that platforms get forked rather than evolve, while something I understand, seems entitle out here on the fediverse. This is all new and intended to become better.

Unless you’ve got some arguments along broader UX and community building lines, I’m not sure there’s much point to this conversation anymore. I hear you, but you haven’t convinced me it’s necessarily a bad idea unworthy of exploration.

[–] half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't use Lemmy like discord. Curious how many people do or why that world be desirable.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Well, while live chat has its place, for sure, and the way discord creates spaces is quite cool I think ...

... there's a problem with how stuff just gets lost in the stream. That's why there's been a bit of pushback against the current tendancy to "chat as a substitute for documentation". Forums, reddits and lemmys tend to be better structured and so better at retaining knowledge/information.

I don't think you can use lemmy like a discord so I'm not sure anyone really is. But in the end, with all of this social media stuff ... it's all text messages with, I suspect, pretty minor UX/UI differences.

In this case, I think there's a good amount of scope for lemmy to fill same space between reddit and discord. Instance local only communities have been added to code base (not shipped yet) and, apparently, private communities are coming too on top of that. If some sort of "chat mode" were to be added, that'd get you pretty close IMO.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That would be very cool, I wish I could be in more live chats

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 months ago

Yea. I started thinking about what is actually the difference between something like lemmy and discord ... and it seemed obvious (to me, which means it might be wrong).

It's a simple UX thing ... you don't need to refresh, scroll or sort to see what's new. The UI tells you and updates automatically. That way you feel "plugged in" without any additional effort. Then it struck me that lemmy used to run websockets.

[–] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Back 6 months ago we all but had that…

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 1 points 9 months ago

Well yea, but it made sense to remove it to save on backend load.

For selected posts or special occasions though? Maybe it wouldn’t be too hard to resurrect the older code?