Introducing: Whispers
29Quickstart
Click “Whisper” on a comment below and send a private message to someone. Want to know how that works? Read on.
Background
I’ve talked before about our forum software in Three Generations of Forum Software: How the meh.com forums (with lazy loaded images) are the fastest forums we’ve ever built and how we dodged creating a sticky thread feature in Introducing: Broadcasts.
Today I wanted to share a new feature we’ve built that will help casemates.com users share personal information when splitting cases of wine without the usability problems of traditional private messaging.
What are the usability problems of traditional private messages? Glad you asked.
Issue 1: “Sent you a PM” spam
I’m sure you’ve seen this sort of thing before.
Very common, especially back in the days of Wine.Woot for our exact use case of splitting cases of wine.
I wonder what percent of private messages also ended up causing a public comment to be posted.
Might seem harmless, but I promise it can get out of hand.
Issue 2: “How do I use private messages” spam
After it’s known there’s a private messaging system comes the “how do I use private messages” spam.
Issue 3: What were we talking about again?
Ok, you’ve discovered that there’s private messages, you’ve been alerted in the public forum that someone sent you a private message, you’ve figured out how to check private messages, and you’ve learned how to send one… but in most forum systems you’re in a completely separate and isolated area of the site.
We’d rather remain closer to the topic already in progress rather than being forced to jump to a new section of the site and losing the context of the discussion. We also don’t want to have to jump back and forth between public and private conversations about the same topic.
Issue 4: Many private message systems are one-to-one
We want to share cases of wine with a few different people so we need our private messaging system to not be limited to trading messages with a single person.
Introducing: Whispers (a friendlier private message)
After an attempt at designing a traditional private message system and trying to somehow solve for the issues outlined above we realized old school Internet Relay Chat (IRC) already had the answer.
While the IRC specification didn’t seem to have an official /WHISPER
command many clients described the /NOTICE
command using the term “whisper” which we thought was a pretty damn great name for this feature.
/NOTICE {nickname|#channel} {text} Sends a private message to the specified {nickname} or {#channel}.
The NOTICE command is just another way to send messages to other people. But, unlike MSG's, NOTICEs will never open a separate window 'to' the other person. It should be seen as a sort of whispering.
So we stole the idea of whispers from IRC and thought about how they could work in our forum and here’s what we came up with…
Whispers work just like replies (mostly)
The best part about whispers is that they work almost exactly like replies which provides us with a few big advantages over private messages.
Because whispers show up inline on the topic page they solve issue #1 (“sent you a PM” spam), issue #2 (“how do I use private messages” spam), and issue #3 (what were we talking about again?).
Because you can add a few users to a single whisper they solve issue #4 (many private message systems are one-to-one).
Because whispers are integrated as a native part of our forum system they work exactly like you’d expect. You format content using Mehdown (our open source Markdown parser) just like topics, comments, and replies. You can “like” a whisper by clicking the star icon. You can edit and delete whispers during the five minute edit window. You’ll see the unread indicator when you visit a topic that has new whispers posted since your last visit. Whispers will honor custom pagination settings.
Whispers are also sent to the specified users via email following a similar set of rules as comments and replies. That is to say emails are sent after the five minute edit window has closed and only to users who have not viewed the topic since the whisper was created. We never send emails to anyone outside the specified users being whispered to regardless of those mentioned by @username
in the body of the whisper or those subscribed to the topic.
It’s important to note that this is the primary way we expect you to notice you got a whisper. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got email forum notifications turned on here: https://casemates.com/account/email-subscriptions
The fine print
Earlier I said “whispers work just like replies (mostly)”. There’s a few key differences.
First, there is an icon to start writing a Whisper that exists alongside the Reply icon. However, you won’t find the Reply icon itself on a Whisper. This is to prevent responding to a whisper with a public reply accidentally.
A quick note about privacy: whispers are not readily accessible to general staff or moderators. Also keep in mind the users you’re trading whispers with can easily copy/paste this data. No credit card numbers please.
Second, posting a whisper does not change the topic’s most recent activity data. That is to say on the forum index page the number of posts remains the number of comments and replies and does not include the number of whispers. This also means that the last activity of the topic only reflects public activity and the unread indicator does not consider any whispers that have been posted.
However, the number of whispers that are visible to you is available on the topic page.
Even with those couple of limitations we think you’re going to enjoy whispers more than a private messaging system. We’ll continue to improve whispers as we learn how they’re being used but this feature set as-is should provide some better tools for splitting cases.
- 21 comments, 52 replies
- Comment
/giphy I’m so excited
@Thumperchick
/giphy gone wild
/giphy whisper excitedly
WHAT IS THIS, A WINE LIBRARY!?
@snapster SHHHHHHHH!!
@snapster I just now got this joke.
/giphy shame
Is there a way to ‘whisper’ without replying to a specific other comment? Let’s say that a wine is offered, and I just want to address my local peeps without posting a general comment to the thread first. The comment box only has a ‘Say it’ option. Would it be possible to add a ‘Whisper it’ at some point?
@tklivory whispers must be in response to a comment. However, you can add the @ name for other users in the whisper, if that helps.
@tklivory We’d love your case sharing post itself out in the open. You never know when it might help build a more robust local group for all to enjoy. From there, whisper away.
@Thumperchick @tklivory Well, in response to a comment of a comment. I don’t see the option to send a whisper to the initial comment:
@markgm The first level response to the Original Post is a Comment. Whispers are not made there because we want only Public Comments to initiate both public replies and whispers.
@snapster No off-topic whispering allowed. Weird. So I’m always going to have to dig through a thread to get to my whispers? There’s no top-level/account sort of option to get there?
@marla25 @snapster That is actually a good point, I assumed whispers would show up under ‘profile’ like recent replies or comments, but it doesn’t appear to.
@melrod333 @snapster Especially since relying on email notifications isn’t super reliable. I’m subscribed to a thread that had two comments recently. I got an email notification early this morning, about an hour after the one post was made. And just now got an email about a post that was made about 10 hours before the one I got emailed about this morning. So my faith is … not absolute.
Feel free to whisper to me here if you’d like to try this out but didn’t want to bother anyone else.
@shawn @dave @snapster
OK, after testing, I have decided that this is really cool and well worth the wait. Thanks!
@dave Thanks again for letting me try this out. I agree, it is a pretty neat function.
One suggestion, add whispers to our own “profile” information like you do replies, etc. I have used that option in the past to find a specific reply or comment. It would make for a much easier way to find a private conversation then scrolling through a full topic.
@melrod333 We’re definitely thinking through future features. That’d be cool but is pretty different than how we do it now (where everything you see on your profile page can be seen by others too) so it’d take a bit of work. I like the idea, though.
@dave that makes sense, another option might be adding a “your whispers” option under account
@dave @shawn @snapster I believe that your “Whispers” toy has broken the Reply capability. Now, when I click on the Reply, I get EVERYONE who is named in the message (although I thoughtfully removed Barnabee from the message).
Sure, I can edit them out, but this seems a bit inconvenient. I checked, and it appears to be linked somehow to changes from the Whispers code, since Reply still behaves normally in the other forums that lack Whispers (and is also broken on Mediocre.
ETA: It’s only on the secondary Reply, not the original Reply to a comment (sorry if that didn’t make sense).
@Shrdlu Good catch. This was a change intentionally made to introduce further parity between replies and whispers but was minor enough to not get a shout out in the Introduction topic. I like this direction because I’m frequently having to copy/paste usernames when doing a multi-account reply and seeing several scenarios where that should have been done by others but it wasn’t.
@shawn This is on PURPOSE? Please say that I’m misunderstanding you. If this is your intent, then out of self-protection, I may need to turn notifications off. :-{
@Shrdlu when replying to a reply that includes other mentions I think it’s more common that you want to mention multiple usernames rather than a single username.
@shawn @Shrdlu I would disagree with you on this, Shawn. I spend more time removing names than I ever did adding names.
That said I love whispers in general!
@Shrdlu @vaaccess it’s working out exactly how I hoped here: https://casemates.com/forum/topics/cadaretta-columbia-valley-cabernet-sauvignon#5a811ff9a675b20528d76819
@shawn Here’s a compromise, then. Perhaps you could add a “Reply all” option, next to the “Reply” which will make it easy for folks wanting to discuss sharing a case, and still contribute to the social aspect where a reply is really meant to be in reply to something said, and not so much a group event.
@Shrdlu I think that’s an excellent solution if we felt this was a problem worth the extra complication of solving.
Not only do I continue to see the exact behavior I was hoping for on today’s deal topic, but I’m further convinced reply-all-by-default is the better direction to run when I also see it on Twitter…
@shawn I agree - having the auto add of all the names is a PITA. I rarely copy/paste a name in. Now I almost always will get to delete a bunch out. Maybe we can opt out of that?
@shawn While I frequently find myself agreeing with @Shrdlu, on this one I do not.
Overall, it is less work to remove extraneous @mentions than to add missing ones, so I believe that once most people are used to it, they will prefer it. (I switched my email clients to default to reply-to-all many moons ago and think it is generally the option involving less work overall.)
@baqui63 I forgive you. You’re wrong, of course.
@Shrdlu Thanks. I knew that (it was a given).
OK looks like we have a way to communicate with one another! Let the case splits grow!!!
@chipgreen
@xena67
@scott0210
@mehnyblooms
@croutonollie
@north316
@Boatman72
@docjavadude
@pjmartin
@scot0210
@KCountry
@CroutonOllie
@HopHeadB
Geeze… you could have put some thought into this
Nice hustle.
/giphy snazzy. I like it.
@shawn Will the redheaded stepchildren on the other site get this too? After all, we’ve been complaining about the lack of a PM longer.
@barnabee all sites will get whispers. they’re on mediocre.com now and we’ll be rolling them out to other sites in the next few days.
@shawn Purple blessings to you.
@barnabee Alcohol gets things done.
@markgm I’ll try to remember that.
@barnabee @markgm but not too much:
though I’ll note that the Balmer Peak is well above the legal driving limit in all of the USA
@shawn
will this remain a casemates only function or move over to the general meh forum
@Cerridwyn This will roll out to the other sites over the next several days.
/whisper
/giphy I see dead people
Tip: you can remove and add anyone to whispers dialog. So any random people can whisper in any random reply space. Usually this will be contextual to the Comment but it doesn’t need to be.
@snapster almost like steganography
Can we set email notifications to on for whispers but otherwise keep them turned off?
@klezman no, that seems pretty fussy
@shawn Hopefully that can become less fussy at some point. I don’t want email notifications for general chatter, but I do want to know when somebody is trying to find me specifically.
@klezman You currently have the option to have your @ mention notifications on. You’ll get notified whenever someone replies to you, mentions you publicly, or sends you a whisper.
Unless you’ve subscribed to a thread, you shouldn’t be getting notifications for general chatter that you aren’t tagged in.
@Thumperchick see @rjquillin below. I was one of the attempted whispers. By “general chatter” I mean things on random threads that I may have responded to, not thread updates generally.
Basically, I want a pull method for anything in the forum. But I want a push method for direct messages, or at least an easy way to check for them like on that sfkaww.
So, I sent a whisper, and the recipient, via an email question, responded they had no idea it was sent.
Kinda makes these worthless it would seem.
What am I missing?
so far I’m zero for two sent.
@rjquillin The recipient of a whisper is supposed to get an email (which could end up in a spam folder), from the intro above:
It’s important to note that this is the primary way we expect you to notice you got a whisper. You’ll want to make sure you’ve got email forum notifications turned on here: https://casemates.com/account/email-subscriptions
@rjquillin I got your whisper. And replied with poor direction following skills, so I deleted and tried again. Seemed to work tho
I just noticed Whisper next to Reply and then went looking for and found this topic. Most excellent news and I’m so glad that we’ll be getting these soon on meh as well.
@baqui63 soon indeed!
Cool stuff - a very clever solution.
Didn’t notice the following answered - perhaps it would be a rare scenario…
If a @username is mentioned in the body of a Whisper, does the fact that @username is in the body - but not in the “Whisper To” group - stay private… or does @username in the body of a Whisper also trigger an email notice to that @username… and make the Whisper visible to them?
@RedOak it’s a bit in the weeds but I attempted to explain in the topic above.
@shawn Thanks - so full on gossip is allowed.
However, as with real world gossip… all it takes is one confidant to leak…
Guessing if someone in the Whisper adds someone to the Whisper, that person only see’s subsequent Whispers (only Whispers with their @username at the top)?
@RedOak @shawn
/giphy whats up??
@RedOak @shawn @username
/giphy ha ha ha
k
Wow, it seems like meh has solved the problem of private-then-public PMs, perhaps making this an oxymoron?
/giphy careless whisper
@lehigh Sometimes giphy doesn’t like hyphenated words. I pulled the hyphen and it worked.
@Thumperchick Thanks. When I posted I think giphy was hiccupping because no image was rendering with the un-hyphenated, so then I hyphenated, and thank you for being so… undashing?
Not sure if you are aware, but the latest Meh.com and casemates.com forum update seems to have broken for mobile (Android, Chrome). It is permanently zoomed in about 30% and requires constant horizontal scrolling.
@DVDBZN I’m using Chrome on Android and it’s not doing that for me. Have you accidentally zoomed in your default settings for those pages?
@Thumperchick
It is still zoomed in by default, but I found a setting in Chrome that lets me override it. Thanks for the suggestion.
Thanks for the flashback. Have not thought of irc in 15 years.
@mddyka
Had to have a duplex sound card for the IRC action!
How do I find old whispers (without looking up the email)? On my profile, I have access to my recent public posts, but it does not show whispers…
I would love for the thread title to go bold when we get a whisper just like when there’s a new post we haven’t read. Seeing as how the bolding is already personalized for each of us, why couldn’t a whisper trigger it just like a new non-whisper post does?
@chipgreen Great idea.
@chipgreen @InFrom I asked for that ages ago. No movement.
@dave?