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Yes, I noticed that people hated when they thought they were talking to a bot. [This is Julia, the OC.] Sometimes I would respond to a sequence of four or five

Yes, I noticed that people hated when they thought they were talking to a bot. [This is Julia, the OC.] Sometimes I would respond to a sequence of four or five messages from a user, and they would immediately stop messaging, as if they didn’t realize a human was there. I tried that tactic for a while - a user would message me or Rachel some inappropriate demand and I would respond with “Absolutley not.” Many users would stop messaging, but some would get even more fired up and become really aggresssive or threatening. So I stopped responding to any message that was inappropriate, mean, or nonsense. It’s a waste of time and energy when you’re trying to grow the company.

ohtwenty 9y ago
Thanks for the article, really good to see, and reaffirm what most of us guessed already. Might I suggest another round of trials but changing up the message when someone joins? It reads quite like a bot/automated system/interactive FAQ, as others point out. I know that personally if I join one of those with a bot you can usually get a real human on the other end if you curtly answer questions and voice dissatisfaction with the bot answers (e.g. "this doesn't help") at which point it offers to give a human. What I'm saying is I wonder how this gender effect would interact with a 'bot-like' variable—if people would react this way if the message was more along the lines of "hi, I'm Rachel and I'm a real human working for…'
danmaz74 9y ago
I'm male and I suppose this kind of problems happen much less often than to you, but I also came to the conclusion that not answering to meanness, nonsense, rudeness etc is the best tactic.
JabavuAdams 9y ago
Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part of the underlying page design. Also, IRL anecdote. My ex-wife used to get heckled and cat-called all the time when walking alone (even pushing baby pram). Number of times it happened when she was walking with me? 0. I'm amused and saddened by all the incredulity on display here. I could have said "well I've never seen it, so it's not happening..." EDIT> You have to be a special kind of ignorant or inexperienced to not have noticed that this is how people talk to women when there are no consequences.
- efreak 9y ago
  > Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part of the underlying page design. I almost entirely agree with this. Chat pop-ups are _incredibly_ annoying. Many websites have a livechat tab at the bottom, or at the side of the screen that you can click to initiate a chat, and that's fine, but the chat should _never_ be initiated automatically (or appear to be). Once the page loads, any change in the main area of a website should _only_ be initiated by user interaction, such as clicking the 'chat' tab at the bottom. Otherwise, for the interruption it generates in my thought process, you might as well just load another page entirely.
- vxNsr 9y ago
  >Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part of the underlying page design. But it wasn't nearly as bad when the avatar was male or nonhuman.

ohtwenty 9y ago

Thanks for the article, really good to see, and reaffirm what most of us guessed already. Might I suggest another round of trials but changing up the message when someone joins? It reads quite like a bot/automated system/interactive FAQ, as others point out. I know that personally if I join one of those with a bot you can usually get a real human on the other end if you curtly answer questions and voice dissatisfaction with the bot answers (e.g. "this doesn't help") at which point it offers to give a human. What I'm saying is I wonder how this gender effect would interact with a 'bot-like' variable—if people would react this way if the message was more along the lines of "hi, I'm Rachel and I'm a real human working for…'

danmaz74 9y ago

I'm male and I suppose this kind of problems happen much less often than to you, but I also came to the conclusion that not answering to meanness, nonsense, rudeness etc is the best tactic.

JabavuAdams 9y ago

Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part of the underlying page design. Also, IRL anecdote. My ex-wife used to get heckled and cat-called all the time when walking alone (even pushing baby pram). Number of times it happened when she was walking with me? 0. I'm amused and saddened by all the incredulity on display here. I could have said "well I've never seen it, so it's not happening..." EDIT> You have to be a special kind of ignorant or inexperienced to not have noticed that this is how people talk to women when there are no consequences.

efreak 9y ago
> Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part of the underlying page design. I almost entirely agree with this. Chat pop-ups are _incredibly_ annoying. Many websites have a livechat tab at the bottom, or at the side of the screen that you can click to initiate a chat, and that's fine, but the chat should _never_ be initiated automatically (or appear to be). Once the page loads, any change in the main area of a website should _only_ be initiated by user interaction, such as clicking the 'chat' tab at the bottom. Otherwise, for the interruption it generates in my thought process, you might as well just load another page entirely.
vxNsr 9y ago
>Was thinking about this ... I reflexively hate bots, but it might be a UX thing -- maybe it's the popup. The pop diverts my attention from where I was looking on the site and feels like an intrusion. Same as if someone comes to your desk and grabs your mouse. So .. maybe an improvement would be to have a status-line or ticker-like text field that doesn't pop up or obscure any part of the underlying page design. But it wasn't nearly as bad when the avatar was male or nonhuman.