Re: [112attendees] WG followup discussions in gather.town (was: Re: HotRFC Gather followup)

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

FWIW, I agree with Fred about the points made in this note and
others.  Gather feels strange and difficult for those of use who
think about human relationships  and many tasks in terms of
partially interconnected and overlapping networks with different
connectivity strengths rather than trees.  I could tell you what
my social psychologist colleagues call the many people who can
think only in terms of linear or tree-like relationships, but it
would probably violate the Code of Conduct.  The app is also
difficult because it does not capture the differences among
"stand there listening", "waiting to speak to someone in the
conversation about something else", etc., as well is "we are
trying to discuss a problem for which you don't have context,
please stop interrupting", at all well (in f2f conversations...
well, their avatars can't frown, glare, or growl).  Its UI/UX
design is a disaster for those who are sufficiently
vision-impaired to be able to see the screen but not make fine
distinctions among icons and avatars much less read tiny type
(especially when it is moving).  Those are examples, not the
whole list.

And that leaves out the issues raised by Randy and others about
the IETF supporting privacy-intrusive and other behaviors that
the IETF claims to reject, ones that I personally agree are
important and would be important symbolically even if every one
of us knew how to block those mechanisms and did so.

back to lurking,
   john


--On Tuesday, November 9, 2021 04:31 -0800 Fred Baker
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> 
>> On Nov 8, 2021, at 8:05 PM, Toerless Eckert <[e-mail]>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> I think it's a difference of opinion.
>> 
>> Ok. So, what are your top issues with gather.town ? 
>> 
>> (note: "must run on IPv6" is already sold ;-)
> 
> Well, yes, it appears to have that issue. Mostly, I would say
> that it has a number of the needed attributes, but I find it
> borderline usable. It would be more usable if I thought in
> terms of tree structures populated with people. Personally, I
> don't.