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As far as my experience goes, the single best way to deal with background noise is... the mute button. In every video conf I've been, you can instantly tell wh

As far as my experience goes, the single best way to deal with background noise is... the mute button. In every video conf I've been, you can instantly tell when "one of them" who can't be bothered to mute themselves joins. The audio quality immediately goes down the drain. It's always the same subset of people who do it, too. As soon as they're enjoined to please mute, the audio quality is restored. No amount of magic signal processing will ever match it. While perhaps misguided to use it that way, the mute button thus act as a social-clueness meter.

leokennis 6y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. I often Skype-call with a group of 10 and we all have perfect mute-discipline. It’s just like a regular in person meeting, except there is just audio.
Terretta 6y ago
"Hold space to talk" is not a bad solve for this, also makes folks ramble less.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Would probably have some major accessibility issues. Plus I'd hate to be the intern that has to sit and hold the space bar while the boss delivers a presentation
  - adrianmonk 6y ago
    It could be built so that the meeting organizer can exempt certain people and so the system can exempt certain accounts.
noisy_boy 6y ago
Probably time to add some mute-shaming by having a large red button "X is un-muted" next to such participants in the participants list. To those who are actually speaking, this shouldn't be a bother anyway since they are, well, actually speaking.
mbar84 6y ago
For especially ... special people, I think the only solution is with hardware. They need a headset that has a physical toggle switch. Not a button where the mute state is an internal state of some device, but instead a switch (or knob) with two separate physical positions for mute and unmute. This way they are not faced with the mental challenge of tracking the mute state, but have a physical manifestation of it at their fingertips and can develop muscle memory to switch it on and off only for the duration they speak. It also means they can mute without having to alt-tab back to the window of the call (because of course they were checking their email in the meantime). Then the policy is that they cannot join unless they use the headset.

leokennis 6y ago

Wholeheartedly agree. I often Skype-call with a group of 10 and we all have perfect mute-discipline. It’s just like a regular in person meeting, except there is just audio.

Terretta 6y ago

"Hold space to talk" is not a bad solve for this, also makes folks ramble less.

Rebelgecko 6y ago
Would probably have some major accessibility issues. Plus I'd hate to be the intern that has to sit and hold the space bar while the boss delivers a presentation
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  It could be built so that the meeting organizer can exempt certain people and so the system can exempt certain accounts.

noisy_boy 6y ago

Probably time to add some mute-shaming by having a large red button "X is un-muted" next to such participants in the participants list. To those who are actually speaking, this shouldn't be a bother anyway since they are, well, actually speaking.

mbar84 6y ago

For especially ... special people, I think the only solution is with hardware. They need a headset that has a physical toggle switch. Not a button where the mute state is an internal state of some device, but instead a switch (or knob) with two separate physical positions for mute and unmute. This way they are not faced with the mental challenge of tracking the mute state, but have a physical manifestation of it at their fingertips and can develop muscle memory to switch it on and off only for the duration they speak. It also means they can mute without having to alt-tab back to the window of the call (because of course they were checking their email in the meantime). Then the policy is that they cannot join unless they use the headset.