"Instant" voice rooms

[jedahan]

Your use case

What would you like to do?

I would like to

• see who is in a voice room in the side bar
• see who is talking at any moment without joining
• and most importantly, join and leave a call with 1-click

In other words, make them as similar to text rooms as possible (or Discord)

Why would you like to do it?

There is this really informative thread, which I'll quote a bit below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28435517 though please excuse the emphasis

The difference is that the discord UI conveys information that is strictly missing in other UIs. By having a separate voice channel, it's implicitly broadcasting "these people want to talk".

It's also broadcasting who -is- talking; I've very frequently made a binary choice of "do intrude" versus "don't intrude" based on who's actually talking. I know based on the social circles that if person A and B are talking, they're likely "talking shop", because person A commissions work from person B. But I also know that if it's person A and C, they're probably just gaming, and I'm welcome to join them.

This implicit social signaling is obscenely important. It's a make or break feature.

When I'm using slack, by comparison; I can see that a coworker is in "some mysterious voice call" but I have absolutely NO IDEA who they're calling, and whether I'm welcome to join. I have to openly intrude on their time, and ask that explicitly, and that's inherently rude. I'm able to do that with close friends because I have a huge buffer of goodwill, but interrupting people is always inherently rude.

Discord gives you a way to get this information without being rude.

If the only way to do it is to be rude, then - here's the kicker: It introduces an outright failure state! Quite a few people will actually decided "gosh, I don't feel comfortable interrupting this person I barely know, I'm just not going to." They literally DON'T make a call they otherwise would make, and it's 100% down to UX. It's a full on, binary, "failure to provide service", and it's because of how your software psychologically runs on the people using it.

How would you like to achieve it?

Good question! I am happy to accept guidance to come up with a concrete plan.

Speculating with no research, changing the 'join room' button link to whatever the join call button would be a good first step

Have you considered any alternatives?

Discord is our alternative, moving away from Slack. We already run a matrix bridge, but would rather have everything on matrix.

We also are considering Revolt, though its a bit risky right now.

Additional context

Please don't hesitate to reach out or we can chat wherever

There are two communities I am part of, for example, nycresistor.org that are leaning towards Discord, even though they would prefer matrix, and this is one of the sticking points.

It is more important for future membership, where many younger folks we'd like to be part of this community, use voice chat way more than our current members.

[robintown]

Duplicate of https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/3546

[robintown]

This is being worked on by the way, see https://matrix.org/open-tech-will-save-us/11 for a preview of the design work if you're interested

[jedahan]

Very interested, thank you so much!

[jedahan]

The recording is excellent - for those just interested in Voice & Video Rooms, I recommend fast forwarding to 21:00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJSqUmMy9IY&t=21:00