Bring back original chat format, the current one is terrible

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  • updated
  • Under review
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rbfnet

Agreed.  Huge step backwards.

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SA Editor Daniel Shvartsman
  • Under review

Hi all,

Thanks for the comments, sorry to hear it. What do you not like about the new one vs. the old format?

We upgraded as part of work to make the chat more stable, but this is the current supported version from RocketChat. If we can hear what isn't working or what you don't like about it, we can work with them on improving the chat based on that. We're also going to send out an email with an explanation of the new chat features, so at least everyone can see how it's meant to work, whether or not that is an improvement.

Best,
Daniel

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rbfnet

The biggest issue for me is the new "reply in thread" feature.  When people use that, I get only one line of context (which is OK) and only one line of their reply.  I think have to click on the reply to bring up the thread to read the whole reply.  In cases where I'm not following along in realtime (which is most of the time for me), I might enter a chat, want to look back over the past (some number of) hours, and have to repeatedly click on replies to pull up the thread to see them.

This wasn't an issue in the previous version.  

To be clear, what I prefer, and what I miss from the previous version, is the ability to see the entire chat, with the complete context of every post, in one timeline in one window.

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Thanks for the reply, rbfnet. That is the requirement right now, you need to click on the reply to the thread to see the full context. It's a trade-off, because one of the complaints we had frequently in the previous version was it was hard to follow as several conversations overlapped. I understand why the current version would be harder, though I'm hopeful that we can get some customization so you can set the chat how you prefer.

I'm not sure of a great solution now except that you can reply in quote, and if your preference is everybody does that, you can ask the author to request that of all users. Reply in quote is the same as the old version of reply, so that's a way to keep the conversation all together.

We will work on the customization as best we can, and if we can't get it satisfactorily, we will look at whether we can turn off threading. I'm hesitant to push that at this stage, because we're also hearing a lot of positive feedback about the threading, and I think it can enable better following of the chat rooms. 

Best,
Daniel