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!
Glad to see we're trying something new. Also, I love being able to see those statistics - super interesting. Thanks for the post. :)
@ZizyTheTurtle
yay!
@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.
@kindSoul10
Hi There! thank you for the question.
Yes, if one person clears the message content, it clears for both individuals.
@Laura Thank you for this Laura. I have trouble with my short-term memory and often can't remember where the conversation left off with the members I do longer-term support with. This will help me greatly :)
@VinylFly
glad to hear!
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.
@Jenna
well said Jenna!! :)
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
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.
@affectionateCity5267
Interesting idea on the copy button, I will share it with the team. However, copy/ paste is easily available to you & the notes section!
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 @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.
@Laura Many thanks! Those are good news! Happy new year! :-)
