Should group chat be opt-in?
by Christian Scholz on January 9, 2008
The next Second Life Viewer release is around the corner which is 1.19.0. If everything goes right it seems to be due end of this month. This also will be a mandatory release, getting everybody up on track again with a decent codebase (remember that nobody ever said that no mandatory updates at all need to happen anymore). This was revealed by Joshua Linden on the SLDev mailing list.
The biggest change is probably under the hood as it is about login and mostly is relevant to e.g. OpenSim developers as without any change it won’t be possible to login to an OpenSim simulator with the regular client. This is already the case with the recent Windlight and RC builds. This problem is most probably addressed by Linden Lab and a discussion about this was happening yesterday already between OpenSim devs and Tess and Periapse Linden.
Other changes involve an update to the voice system which then along with group text chat will have moderator control for group officers and owners.
The biggest change for normal resident will be the change the opting in to group IMs instead of opting out. What does that mean?
The new handling of Group Chat
Right now when you login to Second Life you are automatically participating in every group chat which comes up in your groups. You can only opt out by closing the IM tab. Many people have been complaining about this Group IM spam as it sometimes can be annoying. Another issue is database load at Linden Lab as the amount of IMs is enourmous. This is probably also the reason why group that is that unreliable at the moment.
With 1.19.0 Linden Lab now wants to change that behaviour. With this release you won’t be participating in any group IM chat from that start. You actively have to switch the group chat on for every group you want to be chatting in. And you will have to do that again after every login (there is a auto-join switch planned though for a later release in which you can configure which groups to join automatically).
Now groups are used for a wide variety of things. How do you think will this affect your SL experience. There has been some discussion about this on the sldev mailing list and some hinted to wait for the auto-join feature before deploying it. What would your proposals to that problem?
My problems with group chat
Of course I know the problem, both the group IM lag and group spam is sometimes annoying. To me though it is mostly annoying to see group chat also in the chat overlay if the IM window is closed. I’d rather would like to have an option to switch off this overlay function for IMs and maybe just get a hint that some new IM is waiting for me in some IM tab. Normal chat should still be in the overlay. This would make following a discussion far easier while still being able to follow that group chat when I have time for it.
In general of course it might make sense to opt-in to the very busy group chats. I now left the groups which had a lot of talk because it was a bit distracting. Having them still available when I feel like it would be a good thing. Thus opt-in makes sense.
For some groups though it would make sense to have them always joined, mostly those which have just announcements here and there or simply are important not to miss (somebody mentioned land management groups for getting notified about griefer attacks etc.).
So I would second that proposal to get auto-join in there first and also to maybe put out some beta version first (e.g. as RC) to test this feature. I am not sure right now what would be how annoying. Testing would be great because it might affect simply everybody.
Update: Because of the feedback on sldev Linden Lab is now reconsidering their plans and will report back with an updated version once they have it.
Technorati Tags: secondlife, groupchat, im, update, voice
9 comments
Interesting idea Tao, tho I think it could have an unexpected reverse effect on actual messaging traffic. Group IM only traffics messages to logged in users. If Group IM gets opt-in, group admnistrators will revert to Group Notices for mass messages and therefore potentially raising general traffic because those are sent to all people on the list, even offline. But I agree those sporadic group chats are irritating and very often abused by list members to send spam, so it could be the best compromise after all.
Codie
by CodeBastard Redgrave on 10.1.2008 at 01:40. #
Not my idea, it's a plan by LL and will soon be released ;-)
Well, I doubt that there will be as many notifications as chat. And maybe it's even easier to compute all members of the group than the just logged in ones..
by Christian Scholz on 10.1.2008 at 01:53. #
Tao, could you explain just what it is you "develop" such as to be on this insiders' developer list? There are actually two developer lists. One is the automatic one available to anyone on the website that discusses open architecture. I've subscribed to this one. This discussion is *not* on that listserve called SLDEV.
But there is another SLDEV for a select group who must be invited and clear vetting hurdles, run by Glen Linden. I'm assuming the discussion took place there.
I'm an assiduous reader of the JIRA and proposals to mute group chat. But none of them take *this* form to my knowledge, whereby you are forced to join each group's chat upon log in. No one has asked for that — they've asked merely to mute the chat scroll after it turns on.
I understand this may be a database luxury. But the point is, no significant community of developers in the larger sense, or JIRA users, or the average group user, has been informed of this "solution".
I agree that what would be better is to have the ability to close the tab, and have it stay close, instead of scrolling text on the screen.
by Prokofy Neva on 10.1.2008 at 02:11. #
It's on sldev@lists … sl … com and that one is open to join… Been a almost war there and now Joshua Linden got out with. "Based on the feedback so far from SLDEV we're reconsidering our plans. We're exploring several options based on the feedback,"
Sound great this might actually turn out to something useful and Philips "We will shift from our historical focus on relentless feature innovation to put making and keeping happy customers first on our list of priorities." is maybe more that just words….
by Anders Balp Arnholm on 10.1.2008 at 03:08. #
It was on the SLDEV list about the open source client which is open to everybody. It was not on the business list from Glenn.
The URL to subscribe is here:
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev
If you click on archives you will find the post about the roadmap for 1.19.0:
https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/sldev/2008…
It is a bit hidden in that post though because most of the talk is about weblogin and as the title says: the roadmap.
There is now quite some discussion about this going on and I think the auto-join feature was a result of this. In fact not many people think that changing this with such a short notice in a mandatory client is a good idea.
I would also say though that having a responsive group chat back would also be great and actually would make it usable again. But this means: down with DB load.
(the only question is how much that really helps and this is probably something one can only see when deployed).
by Christian Scholz on 10.1.2008 at 03:19. #
Just wait until chat in-world is opt-in only.
by Dedric Mauriac on 11.1.2008 at 11:30. #
Um, no, I don't want to "just wait" until "chat inworld is opt-in only" because that's not something we participated in a) knowing about and b) deciding about.
I have huge rental groups, they're businesses. They have customers in them. I make it part of the lease terms that people cannot spam the group and must make service requests directly to officers. Most people adhere to that request and in fact the spam and difficulties in the group are rare — group managers are far too fearful and far too fussy about this problem.
By having the social norm of not spamming or using the group as a sort option rather than the harsh coded yes/no ("like a weapon" as Ordinal Malaprop once explained land tools), then the group is open for *emergencies* i.e. when there is a major griefer attack or SL itself is going down in some major way, people can warn the group and I can push advice and help cards. And occasionally the clueless newb will wander on by mistake and then instantly people steer them to the other groups with the express purpose of help.
So I *want* these groups to be "always on". Especially ones expressly designated as the "help" groups. The topic/social groups I want to be "always on" too. After all, this is social media, it's a platform you come on to collaborate with other people. If you want to be a hermit and build by yourself, go on an alt, or stick on "busy" or work in some offline program, my God, the fuss people make because they hear from other people in this interactive world!
With opt-in for every log-on session (which it sounds like they're doing) I'll have to log on and turn on every single group. The groups already have clutter in them with voice being put into group chat and the voice insertion into SL mandating a reconfiguring of the real estate and the group menu which is already annoying in other ways. Though I've tried to adapt for months with the beta of these viewers, I keep having to miss the mark in pulling up the group to talk — you have to hunt around for how to pull up "groups" or "friends" and then pick out "im/call" which is about 2 extra steps from what it used to be. Also about half the time when I want to open up info in the group to issue an invitation or a permissions toggle, I hit the wrong thing and it opens up group chat and then I myself become a mistaken violator of the demand not to chat in the group.
BTW, I don't need any lectures about adapting as I've been adapting to the gadzillion changes thrown into this software every week for the last 3 years.
People like Joshua Linden making these decisions aren't people who work inworld with the tools to do businesses inworld. They work in the code cave where it's all an abstraction.
I have really come to loathe Voice — it's laggy, it's broken a lot of the time, it doesn't turn on right a lot of the time, I can't hear the avatars even zooming in and even on camera mode, I can't get myself heard, I get lectured by Lindens that I should mute my mike, even after I've pressed the mute button, blah blah blah. I just don't know anybody using it! I use Skype!
And I hate the way it has messed up the menus so that friends and groups aren't the way they were and need more hunting and pecking.
by Prokofy Neva on 11.1.2008 at 16:00. #
as a *soft option
by Prokofy Neva on 11.1.2008 at 16:01. #
as said in the update: Linden Lab has heard the complaints and is now reconsidering what to do. So let's wait what they come up with. Hopefully auto-join will then be part of the solution from the start.
by Christian Scholz on 11.1.2008 at 16:11. #