Seen some conversations recently about taking a general discussion thread here onto discord/matrix for “real time chat”.
It then struck me, as someone who’s been on lemmy since before the Reddit API migration … that lemmy used to be more “real time” than it is now with the front-end receiving updates over websockets.
Coupled with the “chat” sort for comments (which is buggy I think), you could turn any post into a live chat.
Obviously you wouldn’t want too many of these as they burden the backend. But it could be a nice feature, using mostly old lemmy tech (?), to allow selected posts to become “live chats”.
It would probably make sense to add time limits for how long this can be on for, and maybe to add limits for how many posts per community … all configurable by admins. But also it could make mega-threads and free-form discussions much more dynamic and attractive here.
EDIT:
There could be both user-specific and post-specific modes for this too.
Any particular user could be able to turn on chat mode for them, so that comments are flattened and updates happen automatically, but just for them. Limiting this in someway on a user based would make sense.
Then a particular post could be put into “chat mode”, such that everybody who opens the post does so in “chat mode” automatically, unless they opt out. Again, limitations on how many posts and for long they stay in “chat mode” make sense here.
Sure. Except I don’t think I’m suggesting anything shoehorned here at all.
I’m talking about a flattened comments section sorted by new that automatically updates itself in some fashion (where even just a badge with the number of new comments would be sufficient). The pieces and behaviour were basically there already, it’s very similar to older forums, and introduces hardly any changes.
People already have basicalky real time conversations here (and on Reddit), just like we are now. I’m talking about enabling users to ease the friction of that. I don’t think it would be a big deal at all from a UX perspective.
If it were such a radically different platform, so what? Lemmy and the fediverse are all new and still in version 0.x. Version 0.20 could introduce a bunch of new stuff. Just like decentralisation is “new”. Just like the coming local only and private communities in lemmy are new. Plus anything that’s opt-in shouldn’t be a problem anyway. Requiring that platforms get forked rather than evolve, while something I understand, seems entitle out here on the fediverse. This is all new and intended to become better.
Unless you’ve got some arguments along broader UX and community building lines, I’m not sure there’s much point to this conversation anymore. I hear you, but you haven’t convinced me it’s necessarily a bad idea unworthy of exploration.