The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #169831 Message #4106739
Posted By: GUEST,The Man from UNCOOL
19-May-21 - 10:50 PM
Thread Name: Zoom Etiquette
Subject: RE: Zoom Etiquette
mg It seems that, on hand-held devices, users get Chat msgs only mid-screen. Laptops and desktops have an option to display them in a side pane, which rearranges the grid of performers' windows, rather than in a central one which overlaps some [which YOU control]. With both options, new msgs directed to you or Everyone display for c.15 secs at lower mid-screen. I THINK you can't turn that off. The issue with the portables is that Chat swamps a lot of the screen, so folks using virtual crib-sheets can find their prompt covered up, mid-song.
The logic of unlimited chat is just as self-centred as the logic about asking folks not to do it because some people find it a problem. Herga, e.g., has edited its Etiquette to ask that people don't message Everyone DURING THE SINGING, in case the performer is on a hand-held. But they don't say "don't comment": they say "wait until the applause-gap before posting" — I'd have said a reasonable request.
Felipa I've not seen the Sing where they limit you to two comments. But see Herga's solution, above.
And I'm with you about the endlessly repetitive comments: the issue there is partly that many people think in clichés. But they're not copying each other: the things arrive in swarms because they're being typed at roughly the same time by people who can't see what's being, or has just been, posted almost simultaneously, just like a long Facebook thread, were posters clearly haven't read earlier msgs and think they're being original.
I'm sure you can't alter, or dispense with, the row [or column, depending on your chosen options] of thumbnail images of the non-performers in Speaker View.
Tattie B I don't know if she was the first, but Debra Chesman [of Valley Folk, Corning NY and FOCSLE Music, Southampton UK] initiated that system, and I think someone in the Mudcat Sing saw it and adopted it. It works much better with Zoom's facility to slide the windows into order [which overrides the default listing-order of black screens after video-on; that causes windows to jump about, as folks turn their cameras on and off, a headache for Hosts] and even better with the Host making everyone else follow their window-order, so you can see who's either side of you. That must even work on portables with only 4 windows onscreen at once, since I guess either Zoom defaults to, or most folks scroll through to, display their own window to themselves.