Pin a chatroom permanantly to list of rooms - Meta - TopAnswers

TopAnswers Meta

टेक्-मराठी

Pin a chatroom permanantly to list of rooms

feature-request completed add tag

5 years ago samcarter

I would like to keep track of chat rooms like the Tavern or the main chat room of the tex site, but I don’t always post messages in them, so they age away.

Would it be possible to somehow pin them to my list of chat rooms at the top right?

Top Answer

5 years ago Jack Douglas

update April 2020: we’ve gone the whole hog and now allow rooms to be manually pinned after all.

We are trialling an alternative…

I would like to keep track of chat rooms like the Tavern or the main chat room of the tex site, but I don’t always post messages in them, so they age away.

Rather than let you choose which rooms to pin manually, the system now shows rooms that you chat in more, for longer. If you leave a single comment, the room will hang around in the list for a few days. If you leave hundreds, the room will remain in the list for up to three months even if you stop chatting entirely, and forever if you comment at least once every three months.

Would it be possible to somehow pin them to my list of chat rooms at the top right?

We’ve also sorted the room list by total comments (and then most recent comment). This has the effect of keeping the sort order quite stable, especially for rooms we chat in fairly often. You should find that The Tavern and TopTeX are effectively pinned now.

Please note these changes are experimental and subject to being rolled back if feedback is negative! We can also tweak the algorithm in various directions if you need us to.

comments

transcript

5 years

Monica replying to Jack Douglas — Sunday, 19th Jan 2020 04:52

That’s a good point; if the list is the union of (relevant) rooms from all communities, then knowing which rooms are from which communities is important.

Monica replying to Jack Douglas — Sunday, 19th Jan 2020 04:51

Oh I see. Thanks for that clarification; I did in fact think you meant the larger set.

2 days

samcarter — Friday, 17th Jan 2020 09:56

<please ignore this chat message, just wanted to test something…>

a day

Jack Douglas replying to Monica — Thursday, 16th Jan 2020 10:38

Thanks for the feedback — and I agree on both counts: they are harder to distinguish and aren’t very meaningful either. There was a suggestion to simply have single-colour squares for question rooms. The main thing that I think is an improvement is that one piece of information is now conveyed much more clearly: what community the room belongs to. That will matter much more when there are more communities I think. I’d be grateful to have further feedback once a few days have passed…

Jack Douglas replying to Monica — Thursday, 16th Jan 2020 10:34

I meant “rooms you chat in more” and I’ve updated my answer to make that clear, thanks. I’m cautious about showing rooms just because other people are chatting though — one person’s interesting activity is another person’s noise isn’t it?

39 minutes

samcarter — Thursday, 16th Jan 2020 09:55

@Jack Great! Thanks a lot for implementing this!

7 hours

Monica — Thursday, 16th Jan 2020 02:43

I’m not a fan of the change to room icons using only the community color. The little gray blobs are harder to distinguish then one gray, one green, the beer mug, another green with a different shape, etc. On the other hand, they’re not especially meaningful, being idenicons, so maybe it won’t matter by tomorrow.

Monica replying to Jack Douglas — Thursday, 16th Jan 2020 02:41

Stable order is nice. When you say “rooms we chat in more”, are you talking about overall activity or individual views? (Assuming the former since you used the plural.) That is, if people talk a lot in room X but I haven’t yet, does it still show up there? I think it should; it’s one way people find out where the activity is.

2 hours

Jack Douglas replying to Monica — Thursday, 16th Jan 2020 00:30

I’m afraid your ‘pin a question for later’ requirement isn’t met with the changes we just made — but we are still giving it thought. Suggestions welcome of course!

11 days

Jack Douglas replying to Monica — Sunday, 5th Jan 2020 09:45

there is one other way — resize the chat area temporarily. Fixing the notifications is coming soon…

6 hours

Monica — Sunday, 5th Jan 2020 03:46

Monica replying to Jack Douglas — Sunday, 5th Jan 2020 03:45

BTW, I’m missing the “dismiss” link on this notification; the only way to dismiss it seems to be to reply to it.

2 days

samcarter replying to Jack Douglas — Friday, 3rd Jan 2020 09:05

Sounds great! Thanks a lot!

28 minutes

Jack Douglas replying to samcarter — Friday, 3rd Jan 2020 08:38

by time pinned seems right to me because then if you are careful you can pin them in exactly the order you want — we’ll figure out later if we also need a way to reorder them…

Jack Douglas replying to Monica — Friday, 3rd Jan 2020 08:37

this is a bit of an omission — currently no notification history is even stored. definitely something we need to fix!

10 hours

Monica — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 23:05

(BTW, is there a list of notifications I’ve received somewhere, or are they gone forever once I dismiss them?)

Monica replying to Jack Douglas — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 23:05

I’m not sure how I would use that. I’d have to keep the notification around unhandled? That’s not how I tend to use notifications.

samcarter replying to Jack Douglas — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 23:02

Putting them on top sounds good. However I would prefer if their order would not change over time (for the muscle memory to click them 😃 ) How about alphabetically? By time created?

Jack Douglas — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 22:59

it might be nice to be able to have the pinned rooms in a specific order but I think a UI for that would be a bit more difficult

Jack Douglas — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 22:58

@samcarter this sounds like a no-brainer to me, thanks for the suggestion. I guess the pinned rooms should just appear at the top of the list, still sorted (among pinned rooms) by when you last chatted in them?

Jack Douglas replying to Monica — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 22:57

For that specific task, I have also been wondering about adding another ‘action’ icon to chat messages that adds the message to your notifications — what do you think of that idea?

an hour

Monica — Thursday, 2nd Jan 2020 21:34

For me, even more important is pinning that discussion tied to that one question I want to get back to but haven’t yet.