An Alternative To The Reply All Idea For Micro.blog lmika.org

@lmika Like it! 👍

@lmika I like the idea! (You mean like a checkbox for “Watch replies in this conversation”, right?

@vincent 👍

@lmika That really seem to be the best solution for everyone. 😃👍

@lmika @vincent @odd I suggested something like this in 2018 as part of this conversation, and mentioned it again a year later as a result of another conversation about discovery. // @jean @manton

@lmika I upvote the "Reply All" in help early on, but gathering tidbits from @manton and @jean, I've seen they carefully consider the ripples of any addition on the entire experience, and I can see why that hasn't cleared the bar.

Your suggestion sounds better. I have used it elsewhere. I am interested to see if it passes muster.

@rnv Ah, OK. Yeah, I get the sense that this may have come up before.

@rnv Very interesting! «We» should probably have jumped on this suggestion collectively back then, but maybe we weren’t ready for it. Wonder what happened to @johnphilpin’s Wish List? (Not found).

@lmika I certainly don't mean to shut the conversation down or anything, rather to say that because it's come up before, it's good to bring it up again — hopefully several minutes after @manton has sat down with his coffee!

@lmika Nice idea. Also not sure how mentioning someone affects character count, but not needing to mention a load of people could help keep replies shorter.

@rnv Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't know how to respond to your reply well. All good. 🙂

@lmika @rnv These are all good ideas. As for coffee, unfortunately this is a tricky one... Not really the time to build it, but the time to figure out exactly how it should work.

@Miraz Well I guess the difference is that if you do want to mention them, you still have to use the way of mentioning them now.

@manton Oh yeah. I fully appreciate that this is one that'll require some thinking.

@lmika Actually, that would be another thing: would such messages show up in Mentions? I check in on Micro.Blog regularly during a day — usually, but not always. At night I'm asleep. Sometimes Mentions are the only real way I know there's something I should at least look at… There might need to be an interface for 'conversations I follow' or something.

@Miraz Hmm, if it were up to me, I'd probably would say no, not for replies in a conversation that arn't explicitly mentioning you. The way that I see it, it would be as if the conversation was like a mini-blog, with each reply a mini post, and you chose to follow it along in Micro.blog. So it's not a perfect replacement for reply all.

@Miraz @lmika Thinking out loud: It’s sort of a self-applied mention, so maybe the easiest way to do it was to automatically add mentions, but then you couldn’t discern between deliberate mentions and self-applied ones, unless with colors or something, (in a way so that accessibility were cared for).

@lmika Fair enough. I think that implies there would need to be an interface for looking at all followed Conversations, in the way I can click a link to see all Mentions.

@odd good question - let me try to find it ...

@lmika Not sure how this will work when the post has been made several hours ago and has garnered several replies. Since Micro.blog doesn’t yet have timeline sync, we’re scrolling down more often than up @manton

@lmika I really like your idea of a “watch” button like the way GitHub works. That makes a lot of since in my mind.

@pratik @Miraz @odd Yeah, I can see that something would be needed if this was to be used for active conversations with those within the thread. I guess for me I'd use it more for simply getting updates on a conversation that I'm not participating in, but that is quite different than a reply all for those actively in the conversation. Some form of middle ground between a mention and a post of the timeline might help here, but that could disrupt the simplicity of the system as it exists now. Maybe some smarts can be added in that it will determine whether you've actually replied to someone in the conversion, and it will post updates as mentions? IDK.

@lukebouch 👍

@lmika Including mentions in the timeline is mostly a discovery feature. The timeline could feature only posts with a prominent indicator/affordance with those that have replies (even one). Currently, it’s like a feed reader where you’ve subscribed to their blogs and their comments (on other blogs). It’s fine but sometimes replies without context don’t add value and I admit I sometimes feel too lazy to look. Or when I do, I read all the replies first, in the conversation view and then again in the timeline view which I don’t prefer when I’m trying to catch up at the end of the day. @odd @Miraz

@pratik Why is mentions in the timeline to begin with, given that it has its own section in the sidebar? @manton

@rishabh @pratik The timeline also includes replies to other people, so it's not the same as Mentions in the sidebar, which is just when you're mentioned. I like including everything by default for discovery, but more options to filter could be good.

@manton I should've clarified that.

@rishabh, we have two options - includes all replies of the people that we follow or only the replies that we both follow. It can be a bit confusing. The former is more "noisy" but also great for discovery. I have opted for the latter and often find people either via Discover timeline or when I click through to a Conversation thread so I don't miss the advantages of the former option.