It does mean that there are real users who checked you. I think the notifications are plausibly too “scammy dating site” regardless, but they are not false.
I realise that there’s another thing in this area that I’m possibly confused about. I think I’m not confused and it’s just that there isn’t a good way to present the relevant information.
So, if I get the notification, that means that at least one person wants to talk to me. So far, so good. And then I go to the dialogue page and see a list of users. But it’s not necessarily true that at least one of them wants to talk to me, right?
(Because the list I see is filtered by my having upvoted things they wrote, but AIUI not symmetrically by their having upvoted things I wrote. So maybe user X liked things I wrote, went to the dialogue page, saw my name, and checked the checkbox, causing me to get notified … but I haven’t read what X wrote, or happened not to upvote it—I don’t vote all that much, either up or down—and so X is not on the list I see. So poor X will be waiting for ever for my response, since I never get presented with the option to suggest dialogue with X.)
This could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve checked my box, but that’s no good because then in some cases I can tell that someone’s checked my box without ever having to check theirs. (I’m not sure this mechanic actually makes sense for dialogues in the way it maybe does for dating, but it’s obviously a very deliberate decision.) Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve upvoted things I wrote, but that’s also no good because that leaks information about who’s upvoted me. Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list both at random and if they’ve checked my box, or both at random and if they’ve upvoted me, or something, but that’s probably no good either because it still leaks some information and many ways of doing it leak way too much information, and because it clutters up the list of potential dialogue partners, and clutters it worse the less information it leaks.
None of these “fixes” seems at all attractive. But the alternative is that in some (many?) cases X will check the box for Y and there will be no way for Y to reciprocate, even if in fact Y would be very interested in dialogue with X.
So, if I get the notification, that means that at least one person wants to talk to me. So far, so good. And then I go to the dialogue page and see a list of users. But it’s not necessarily true that at least one of them wants to talk to me, right?
No, they will appear on the list somewhere, because the last section on the dialogue matching page is “Recently active on dialogue matching”, which shows all users who have made checkboxes within some recent time interval. So if they don’t appear in any of the previous lists, they will appear there.
Yeah, it does seem like a tricky design problem. Some discussion of it in the thread here.
My current guess is that it would be better to have a casual-feeling non-anonymous “invite to dialogue” than the dating-style algorithm. I also guess it won’t be implemented soon (for a combination of things like its marginal value given matching being smaller and how long I expect dialogues to be an organisational priority).
Thanks for the clarification! I think there would be some value in either putting some message to that effect on the dialogue page, or else having a page linked from there that provides more explanation of what’s going on and what everything means.
(The former might be tricky, since what it would be useful to see there might depend on what’s in the user’s notifications and maybe also on whether they got to the dialogue page by clicking on one of those notifications or by other means. Or maybe it would be bad for it to depend on that since then the contents of the page would change in not-so-predictable ways, which would be confusing in itself. But maybe a message along the lines of “At least one other user has checked the box to mark you as a user they would like to dialogue with. The most recent time this happened was about two days ago.” Or something; I haven’t really thought this through.)
It does mean that there are real users who checked you. I think the notifications are plausibly too “scammy dating site” regardless, but they are not false.
I realise that there’s another thing in this area that I’m possibly confused about. I think I’m not confused and it’s just that there isn’t a good way to present the relevant information.
So, if I get the notification, that means that at least one person wants to talk to me. So far, so good. And then I go to the dialogue page and see a list of users. But it’s not necessarily true that at least one of them wants to talk to me, right?
(Because the list I see is filtered by my having upvoted things they wrote, but AIUI not symmetrically by their having upvoted things I wrote. So maybe user X liked things I wrote, went to the dialogue page, saw my name, and checked the checkbox, causing me to get notified … but I haven’t read what X wrote, or happened not to upvote it—I don’t vote all that much, either up or down—and so X is not on the list I see. So poor X will be waiting for ever for my response, since I never get presented with the option to suggest dialogue with X.)
This could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve checked my box, but that’s no good because then in some cases I can tell that someone’s checked my box without ever having to check theirs. (I’m not sure this mechanic actually makes sense for dialogues in the way it maybe does for dating, but it’s obviously a very deliberate decision.) Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list I see if they’ve upvoted things I wrote, but that’s also no good because that leaks information about who’s upvoted me. Or it could be “fixed” by including people on the list both at random and if they’ve checked my box, or both at random and if they’ve upvoted me, or something, but that’s probably no good either because it still leaks some information and many ways of doing it leak way too much information, and because it clutters up the list of potential dialogue partners, and clutters it worse the less information it leaks.
None of these “fixes” seems at all attractive. But the alternative is that in some (many?) cases X will check the box for Y and there will be no way for Y to reciprocate, even if in fact Y would be very interested in dialogue with X.
No, they will appear on the list somewhere, because the last section on the dialogue matching page is “Recently active on dialogue matching”, which shows all users who have made checkboxes within some recent time interval. So if they don’t appear in any of the previous lists, they will appear there.
Ah, so it is. Thanks.
Yeah, it does seem like a tricky design problem. Some discussion of it in the thread here.
My current guess is that it would be better to have a casual-feeling non-anonymous “invite to dialogue” than the dating-style algorithm. I also guess it won’t be implemented soon (for a combination of things like its marginal value given matching being smaller and how long I expect dialogues to be an organisational priority).
Thanks for the clarification! I think there would be some value in either putting some message to that effect on the dialogue page, or else having a page linked from there that provides more explanation of what’s going on and what everything means.
(The former might be tricky, since what it would be useful to see there might depend on what’s in the user’s notifications and maybe also on whether they got to the dialogue page by clicking on one of those notifications or by other means. Or maybe it would be bad for it to depend on that since then the contents of the page would change in not-so-predictable ways, which would be confusing in itself. But maybe a message along the lines of “At least one other user has checked the box to mark you as a user they would like to dialogue with. The most recent time this happened was about two days ago.” Or something; I haven’t really thought this through.)
That seems like a good idea! (I don’t know exactly when we’ll get to it).
(Also, sorry for the brevity of my messages; I am grateful for the details in yours)
Brevity is fine. I’m sure you have other things to do besides replying to my comments.