If I don’t want to see a chat, and archive it, I don’t get constantly reminded that I have archived chats.
Actual behavior
Since a few versions, the “archived chats” view is constantly on top of the chat list. I constantly have 1 unread chat in there, because the mastodon bot sends me notifications which I don’t need and can’t mute; I archived and muted the chat so I can ignore this; since the “archived chats” item is pinned on top of my chat list it’s hard to ignore.
Example Images
Ideas
I get that this was introduced so people don’t miss messages forever just because they have archived + muted a chat. My case that I constantly get these messages but can’t block the contact as a whole is kind of rare. But wouldn’t it be possible to hide or unpin the “archived chats” item from there? They are archived for a reason, and being able to access them in the menu should suffice, no?^^
I think Telegram is a good example of how to do that.
In the desktop version you can choose whether the archived chats should be displayed in the “Hamburger” menu or in the chat list.
It is also possible to display the archived chats in a reduced size.
In the iOS version, you can hide the archived chats and, if necessary, bring them out again by swiping down a little longer.
Could the bot be fixed not to send you these messages? Silently ignoring the messages like this has another downside that it can easily use all your storage quota without you noticing.
Sure, probably not even hard. There is already a /mute command for the Home timeline, just needs to be added for the Notifications timeline. Would be much more straightforward than what I propose here.
But the mastodon bot is just an example for a use case - it’s not unusual that you want to stay in a group chat because you might need it at some point, but don’t want to be constantly reminded that it exists. And also my partner recently asked me why this “Archived Chats” item is suddenly there, they didn’t even remember that they ever archived anything, because the point of archiving is that it’s out of sight message requests from noreply addresses (e.g. paypal) were archived without explicit user interaction; the new change basically brought them back to the top of the chat list^^
Archived chats are primarily for storing finished conversations. If they are muted and you receive some late reply, it still makes sense to read it when you see the badge.
For ongoing conversations that you need to put out of sight, I think there should be a different concept.
Could be folders or snoozed chats.
Telegram is a bit of a mess across the different UI here, not sure if we should take that as an example. also, Telegram shows the last messages, while that may be useful, it is the opposite of what is requested by the original post.
WhatsApp’s default is what Delta Chat is doing - maybe this is also a reason we are not getting that much backlash as one would expect for such a large change
what we try to avoid in general are options in the settings. also, if the “Archived Chat” is suddenly at a completely different place on some UI, that sounds like sth. that should better be avoided. not sure about additional types. we have now some consistency and simplicity that is worth to keep and to build on that.
that said, it was already discussed here and there how to iterate over “Archived Chats”, and the ideas are pretty close to what was mentioned here
eg. to have an option to “hide” the archived chat (long tap, right click or swipe) - it would still be atop of the list, however, only be shown on “overscroll” - that could work at least on android/ios, maybe even desktop.
however, implementing that seems to be quite some work. on some UI the chatlist is already a quite complex beast, with issues already now, adding more complexity there should be considered carefully, also timing wise
if there are ideas how to implement that in an easier way while keeping the objectives of a simple, consistent UX across all UI and not to miss messages, that’d be very welcome. eg. core could also move “Archived” to the end of the list when “Hidden” - that’s less nice, but much easier to implement - so maybe good enough. but maybe there are other ideas to make things easier …
EDIT: wrt Conversation Swipe Snoozing question is also if the presence of “Archived” or the “Badge always whowin 1” is the core of the issue
Maybe it would make sense to scale down the “Archived Chats” in DC-Desktop a bit.
On the one hand, this would save some screen space and, on the other hand, they would be less noticeable.
