[jdev] Message Read Receipts

[Hund, Johannes]

On 14 May 2013 13:36, "Peter Saint-Andre" <stpeter at stpeter.im<mailto:stpeter at stpeter.im>> wrote:
> Although I question the usefulness of spending time and energy defining
> an extension whose usefulness we find debatable,

I think the usefulness of your questioning its usefulness is open to debate.

[JH] I question the usefulness of spending time and energy debating about the usefulness

> I wonder: what would
> the user experience be here? Do I need to click a button verifying that
> I have read and understood each message (say, before the client will
> show me another message)?

There's two cases I can think of.

1) User has message delivered (ie, the message is not lost). When user focuses the chat window, or otherwise takes action such that the message has clearly been presented to the user, send a receipt. This indicates to the sender that the message has reached the user.

This is useful in the sense that it aids conversation flow - like those messages you send to someone immediately after "Right, back later." - it's useful to know if those were seen or not.

2) User has message delivered. User is requested to click a button to indicate the message has been read and understood, and will be acted upon.

This is useful in the case where a MEDEVAC request has gone through a MUC room, and it's important to see who has seen the notice and started action. Interestingly, this would need to transit MUC rooms, and have lists of users that need to acknowledge it.

My understanding is that the OP is after (1) only, but I suspect it'd be worthwhile investigating (2) as well.

[JH] I do think another interesting case is where the message is in fact "read" by a agent/bot/program (e.g. service bots or even M2M messaging),  a timestamped receipt request is in fact helpful as there is a temporal difference between the reception, processing and response to a message - would be a real-world case 1 example.

Regards, Johannes
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