January 2: Saving Messages in 1-1 Chats & Group Support
Hi Everyone,
Back in December, I made this forum post regarding saving messages. Many of you have long asked for more saved messages in your conversations and up till now, we have saved only the previous 10 messages in every conversation. This was for anonymity and storage reasons.
However, we are moving over to a new tool that will allow us to store and retrieve messages much more efficiently. As it can be frustrating to lose messages, this tool will allow us to do that. Hooray! Instead of saving messages by count, we will be able to save them by time.
And we let you all cast your votes....The results are in (please see the specific results below)
Based on the results, we will be moving forward with the following updates to message counts:
----> All 1-1 chat messages will be saved for 1 months (remember you can clear them at any time)
----> All group support messages will be saved for 24 hours!
Note: You will see this change will go live over the next 30 days. It will save messages in this way moving forward. Not messages from the last month or last day.
Vote count results!
Total votes: 356
Are you in favor of a time based message saving approach (vs a count):
49.7% voted that they loved the idea!
32.6% of people said they are open to giving it a try
17.7% voted that they would like to stick to our current system of saving only 10 messages
Save messages in my 1-1 chats within the following time frames:
One Month: 39.5%
Two Months: 14.4%
Three Months: 11.8%
Four Months: 1.4%
Five Months: 0.6%
Six Months: 32.3%
Save messages in my group support rooms within the following time frames:
24 Hours: 54.4%
3 Days: 15.6%
5 Days: 5%
One week: 7.9%
Two Weeks: 17.1%
Thank you to everyone who cast their vote!
@Laura thanks for sharing. One important question: when one of the chat participants in 1-1 chat is deleting messages will it be deleted for both parties? That's something most of the people I know expect: press delete prunes the messages for everyone.
I'm glad this was something brought into consideration and something we can move forward with. I can see the positive potential with this change helping listeners who may have struggles remembering chats because they have many regulars, or for any other reasons. I can also see this helping members be able to reflect back on what was said, look back over any tips that were given for coping, etc, and review on the support they were given for that month by a listener.
For Group Support, does this mean I see 24 hours of what I was present for, or the last 24 hours, regardless if I was present or not?
@AffyAvo
this is a good question as well. @krinkthemellowunicorn do you know the answer to this?
@AffyAvo
You will see all the messages from the past 24 hours, regardless of if you are present or not. HOWEVER, at launch, you will only see the previous 40 messages. We will add a "see more" button that will load the rest of the messages form the previous 24 hours in the near future.
@AffyAvo - I suspect it is a blanket rule that just trims messages that are > 24 hours old, but by now we probably have a sense of what it's like in group chat?
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn I haven't really figured out what exactly it's showing. It's not the last 24 hours for sure. It's not even the last hour. It does give more recent messages than it used to (I think a certain # than a timeframe) and then there's a big jump back in time, not sure if that's when I was last on as I often have a tabs open that I don't pay attention to.
@AffyAvo - a big jump back in time generally means messages stored locally on your device
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn I tested another browser, it went back about 5 min. So probably just a certain # of messages.
@AffyAvo - hmmm, ok.... that seems different from what I expected. I'll talk to @devTeam
@Laura I have read that there were issues with the voting form - have all persons been able to re-vote and have all issues been addressed? It doesn't look like it from the messages on the other post.
@cloudySummer I agree at this looking at the polls - it looked lilke there were 2 main groups - those concerned about privacy and wanted things deleted fairly quickly, without having much of the chat saved and those who felt like it should be available long term.
The original poll didn't really include either option.
@AffyAvo I personally would have preferred either no change, or just an increase in the number of messages, or something different altogether (see below)... I'm still within the first conversation with my listener, and we're only exchanging pms a couple times a month... Which will become a lot harder to follow soon, unless at least a certain number of messages is kept - like 'either the last x messages, or the last month, whichever is longer'. But it would have been hard to vote on that, except in a multi-step-vote, that first collects options, and then in a later round picks the most frequent suggestions for voting.
@cloudySummer
I corrected the form twice and allowed ppl to resubmit if they requested. (disregarding their previous vote in the count)
@Laura Yes, I saw that - it sounded like three times, even, those google forms seem to be very obstinate! But after the last correction you posted about, people were still complaining that some parts were mandatory, when they should have been optional (e.g. the post by dawnA). That's what I was referring to.
@Laura you never corrected the form, though.
people who didn't want the change had to vote for 1 month because it was the lowest. that's why it got the most votes (not that i'm complaining, because it looks like 6 months would've won and... yeah).
there was no 1h option for group chat, which is what it should be because honestly at what point does anyone need to go back 24h even when modding? tbh the 40 messages we're getting now is enough to figure out exactly what's going on.
overall, i was very, very upset with how it was handled.
slightly less so now.
but yeah being presented with the illusion of a choice is rly upsetting :( <3'
also this never should've been a general poll. if you want the community's opinion, the least you can do is determine if someone is a member/listener/community leader & how long they've been on the site.
because of course everyone should be heard, but this topic probably should've been most focused on what new members and community leaders think yah? coz if those align, bingo. & ain't nobody, even me, can complain about that.
unless you force me to choose 1 month :P'
(also tbh you should just pull that data silently but you don't i's shusling now bc at least the site works :D)
@bunnypants @Laura Yeah, illusion of a choice is a good phrase to capture this. It was the same with the animals. If all 7cups want is applause, then - well - they could just ask for it. I feel these 'giving the community a chance to engage, but we have actually already made up our minds before asking them' questions are examples of a very inconsiderate and dishonest way of dealing with people, completely contradicting the philosophy they advertise.
@cloudySummer
With me, I didn't even know there was a vote going on. Sad to not be able to make a vote at all.
@Dawn04 same here.
So starting today, I won't have to manually copy paste my listener's important advices ?!
Also, if a small copy button be provided with the message sent so that we can selectively copy messages important to us in one folder or something. Saving is important to me as my memory fails me too often.
bye bye the privacy. this thing will now be part of PAST and will no longer exist. mainly in group support if everyone can see the messages from past 24h no matter if they participated or not. I guess there will be a huge decrease in participation in group support chatrooms.
Hoping the button for clear chats in 1-on-1 will work better and remove the messages for both parts properly, because regulary it did it only at half. and if all messages are for staying there 1 month when the button doesnt work properly, then it will be a HUGE privacy issue.
For people I follow up only once every 1-3 months, then i will have to work my memory because there will no longer be any trace of our last messages. mainly if someone blocked us and recontact us, we will not can see what is happened before they block us. but its fine i guess.
@vivelespatates
You
@lilmango The site is using google analytics, and makes data collection a default setting. I don't think privacy is really a big concern for the team - but I believe improving Noni is.
@cloudySummer - google analytics doesnt include personally identifiable information and is blockable. we use to mainly to measure traffic and notice problems, fwiw.
privacy is actually quite important here!
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn Then maybe it's a problem with understanding the implications... The site could use Piwik (or whatever its new name is, I forgot... Matomo?...). It's PHP, too, would only cost the infrastructure and maintenance, and would probably integrate very well. As for Google, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Analytics#Privacy - they know which sites one visits, which should be none of their concern (and yes, I know how to block, but subjecting everyone to this?). Anywhere where even a page visit could be incriminating/stigmatizing, there's no space for google, in my opinion.
@cloudySummer - fair enough and if we can ever manage to migrate to an entirely self hosted analytics stack i
@KrinkTheMellowUnicorn yeah, I know, this site is huge... still hope it's going to happen some day.
@vivelespatates @Laura
I also agree that with having the last 24 hours visible to everyone in the group chat that the participation and sharing will decrease. It will just be mainly random chatting that is happening, and not actual sharing as to what is going on in people's life and struggles people are having, since it will be visible to anyone and everyone for 24 hours. It's one thing sharing knowing that people may come in and some may be lurking as you share. It's totally different knowing that it will be out there for 24 hours after you've said it...doesn't bode well with me to be honest.
I usually love the updates that are happening, however this is one that I don't think is a step in the right direction...other than that a greater number of messages in 1-on-1 chats will be visible for longer.
Yepieee@Laura
Well, I hope this work out as far as privacy and wellbeing is considered.
It does seem odd to implement such a large change to the chat system, with a less than 50% overall approval rate, from just 360 votes (when we have multiples of thousands of users), usually large changes take the form of 60-70%+, but if this is what is happening, this is what is happening.
I do like that this can be useful for people with memory issues etc, to easily recall events of previous chats, or to remind people of what is occuring in their chats, but I just feel the vote count and percentages are too small for it. An improved note system, inclusive of each chat would have seemed more appropriate for the same results.
That being said, it is a change that is happening, so I'll be sure to give it the benefits of the doubt and give it time to settle in before casting "judgement" over it. Along with other people present though, and in regards to my post on the original thread, how are the group chat messages interacting in this system? Are we seeing all posts in 24 hours, or all posts we were present for, in 24 hours?
@Jack hi
@Jack I'm not sure what kind of change you did. Ur I'm sure a lot of members would be happy to see what they talked about with the listeners. My members use what we talked about to help them do their task.
@Jack You're not including the 30+ percent who said they are open to giving it a try. That puts support around 80%, not 50.