[ticker-dev] Re: channel subscription rules

[David Arnold]

-->"Matthew" == Phillips, Matthew <Matthew.Phillips at dsto.defence.gov.au> writes:

  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.

  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.

One aspect of the group of people I communicate with most is that
they're all online constantly, and will normally check what's happened
ticker-wise while they've been away from the computer.

None of this is saying it's a bad thing, just some ideas about why I
haven't swapped from XTickertape to Sticker :-)

  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.

  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.

  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.

  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.





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