[lucb1e]

Not sure I understand. They're called "meetings" IRL right? Just that they're now online, a lot of the time. We use the word call and meeting interchangeably, I'm not really seeing the difference.

(The only difference between before covid and after is that we are more people and have more calls that take longer. Text chatting is a lot more structured and efficient and inclusive because nobody has to wait for a turn while the topic evolves past five persons before it gets to you, but whenever a topic gets more than a handful of messages, invariably $boss will propose to stop wasting time and "plan a meeting" .... but I also have that experience with IRL meetings when there are more than, say, five people involved)

[vel0city]

Seeing who is in the channel is the big difference. It's one thing to just phone someone up, potentially disturbing them from whatever they were doing and suddenly demanding their attention through a ring. It's another thing to see they're in an open communication space and hop in to join impromptu. There's significantly less social friction involved.

[CuriousCosmic]

The problem is that in the real world you can have more than one conversation in a space. With a group call/channel you get exactly one conversation or a bunch of people yelling over each other.

You could probably make that work in VC but the UX is going to be awkward and un-intuitive no matter how you slice it.

So the best option (online/available status and 1:1 calls which is what we have now) is probably the best alternative.

[steveklabnik]

Discords usually have multiple audio channels, solve the "exactly one" issue. If you really want to have two conversations, one group drops down to another one.

[CuriousCosmic]

Yes however that's no different than just being in multiple calls but just swapping between them (ala skype for business or teams).

It's still exactly one conversation you can be part of at a time. This compares to in person conversation where you can be part of a greater conversation while also carrying on a smaller, secondary conversation with the people immediately adjacent to you.

I've seen some conference software try to address this with a "tables" system where you sit at a table of a few people but are in a greater discussion room. Your table conversation is only heard at the table but the room conversation is heard at all the tables. then the table channel is "open mic" and the room "push to talk" (or both being bound to different "push to talk" buttons).

That kind of addresses the issue but it's awkward and doesn't translate well to anything other than conferences. Maybe a 2d/3d game style environment with range chat would work the best for something like this but I've yet to see an interface for this that isn't miserable outside of actual games. It'd solve the "walk up and talk" issue but it'd add 10 other issues all of it's own.

[vel0city]

> that's no different than just being in multiple calls but just swapping between them

Its very different.

Lets log into Discord. We see Alice, Bob, and Charlie are in Room A. Domingo and Ed are in Room B. Francine, Greg, and Hoarice are in Room C. To swap between these three conversations, we just double click on one room or the next. We're instantly swapped between these calls.

Lets say your group of friends has three different calls going on in Skype. How do you quickly see who is talking to who? How do you quickly hop from one conversation to the other? Like in Teams, if a few people are in a call together, how do I know? Sure, I can see Alice and Bob are in a call, but how do I know they're in the same call? How do I know that Charlie is also in there? How do I join their call in progress if not a scheduled meeting? If I'm in the call wtih Alice, Bob, and Charlie, how do I know that Domingo and Ed are talking about the topic of Room B?

The ergonomics of the "call/meeting" versus "room/channel" is vastly different. They both very much have their place, but they're not interchangeable. Forks are good for eating, but it turns out spoons are useful too.

[doctor_eval]

It’s about the ceremony involved to initiate an informal meeting.

IRL you might just grab an empty office or room and hit the whiteboard for ten minutes.

In other tools you need to invite specific people to a chat, and they have to find and respond to that specific event.

In discord you say “let’s meet in the engineering channel” and anyone who also wants to join can do so.

It’s a seemingly simple difference but I found discord so great for remote work relative to slack. It’s just much more casual, like real life.

[andrewmutz]

I think he's referring to just walking up to someone and talking to them in the office.