Never mind, we all want to be heard. I do not know if you have been using other messengers than Delta Chat, but my personal impression is that a messenger must be a “geek toy” nowadays to be attractive, especially to younger generations of people. The developers are working very hard to cope with some challenges our classic mail system “provides” to them. They basically have to find ways around limitations, while other products often rely on a newly created technical basement that is more flexible. But - and that is a huge advantage to me - Delta Chat is a good example of “backward compatibility”. It is a tool that can be used to communicate with anyone who owns a mail address, messages do not even have to be encrypted.
AFAIK, this has been discussed already, and I think we are not that far away to have this feature in a future version of Delta Chat, but that is something the developers certainly know much better than I do.
Much more important to me is the stability of Delta Chat, and I have been able to observe continuing progress towards that goal. (You can see what is going on in the respective Github repositories, how many huge and tiny improvements were made, and how enthusiastic the development team is. I have never known a team of a higher commitment than this one.)
But I have to admit that Delta Chat is not for everyone. After all, it is a messenger, not a classic mailer. You may want to have some features in Delta Chat which you are used to have in a MUA. The good news is that there are ways to use both kinds of these apps together, just as you like.
This forum section is the right place to be heard when talking about (new) features, considering that users can be so much different. The more people demand something specific, the “louder a voice” can become to enhance Delta Chat the way it should be.
I don’t think that geek toys segment is right for ubiquitous
messaging system. There are options like Tox, and other where you
can put your efforts into learning the system not the talk itself.
And there huge mass of people who tired of having number of
systems for one casual thing. (Surprised this isn’t posted every
week: ()) =) And they’re ready to use the
fact that 98% of smartphones have email at least assigned by
Google or Apple. So it should be easy to use, not geeky. And
this is not because I want to see it sleek, it’s because my
contacts would switch to it massively only if it would be a
no-brainier. Said, but true.
regarding second part of your message
you’re right, and this is why I’m so concerned
open the forum and stumble through
people are talking about Moar features and Moar
which could bring illusion (or real, idk) that people need new
features more than finalizing core features
and that’s the problem for people like me
I can say sorry several times and inspire my peers that it will
become better
but time passes and I left no one who wants to wait and use this
communication
and when I see that we warming up new alpha things instead of old
beta issues
it brings deep disappointment in the whole image of future
I think it is a huge challenge for the whole Delta Chat team to inspire people all around the world to use the app, because there are a lot of well-established messengers out there. You are right when you say that usability is the key to success: The goal is to cope with the competition, which - by the way - offers a similar “geek experience” to which especially the young people are getting used.
If you are the typical Desktop user who does not use a touch device at all but a classic mouse, things are not so intuitive to operate anymore nowadays. What you can see in Delta Chat as well as in other messengers is the “tribute” to users who already have “touch experience”, and the try to satisfy those who come from the “good, old conservative corner”. Also the way how we communicate today is quite different, people often just say hello and write much shorter messages than “novels”. (My wife tells me all the time that I should stop writing “novels” like this one, but see, I do not care. )
I suggest to open a new thread and continue to discuss Delta Chat usability there, as I believe that we slightly moved into general criticism on messengers.
Looks like I have not enough permission s to split this thread to a new topic. It would be so we can use some help from seniors. )
World is moving fast. Things that are popular now will change rapidly. Personally I have modern UI. PROBLEMS with landscape on phones. Letting the screen touching of the screen. Keyboards usage degradation. (Especially in cars) . But emails turns out to be most resilient form of communication that will live long. Hope we will see more interfaces like spacemacs where you type and choose. And
Hi, I’m learning how DC works and I’m reading some of the forum threads.
This one is quite old: are the groups still “democratic” or some administration options are been added?
I think the owner should have the possibility of give or take the admin rights to other users, but first of all the owner shouldn’t be removed by anyone.
It’s still “democratic” in that anybody can perform add/remove actions. Do you know of a practical case where it was a problem? If someone randomly kicks people from the group (or adds them) and does not change their behaviour after others compalin, it’s time to open a new group without that person i guess. During my years of chatting this never happened so i suspect that wanting “group admin” UX is driven more by theoretical concerns than practical experiences.
I only know that behavior from my school time where people were fighting each-other that way(removing each other from groups) so you needed people that took the group admin role to moderate those groups.
But they also sometimes abuse their powers. Its a mess, trying to solve a social problem with a technical solution, but often you can’t choose which people you are in a group with so its good to at-least have such a feature to improve the situation a little bit:
For example a teacher or the class rep could be the admin of a class-group of a middle school. So the students can’t each-other in mobbing situations.
I’m using Telegram and I’m seeing in every public group there is always someone that enters to disturb.
I’d like opening a group and share the qr in the web to make people know DC, but I fear to be kicked by the first bored kid…
I’m so happy this never happened to you!
Yes, i totally see that if you are start to be a group with strangers you want to have some group membership control. Delta Chat is, for now, mainly a private messenger. There are some efforts and examples towards making it work with larger groups, but it’s then also interesting i guess to not see all members. So for moving Delta Chat towards supporting more TG-style things, several things need to happen.
yes, that is something I miss, inviting people publicly is some nice way to interact with new people, more with the new invite links, but there is always the risk a new member will join and just destroy the group or add a bunch of unknown people or institutions/services addresses against their will.
Also because group consistency is hard when it is completely decentralized control and any member can add/remove contact, causing problems when someone leaves the group but then gets re-added by someone else’s message accidentally.
With a single group owner, potentially being a “group invitation bot” this problems will be solved while only the bot will be able to add new people via invite link etc.
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