#protips #plusupdates

#protips   #plusupdates  

via Bradley Horowitz 

Originally shared by chee chew

improving the quality of conversations in hangouts

improving the quality of conversations in hangouts isn't only about improving the audio and video technology.  it's also about facilitating good social interactions.  

the hangouts team and i have been hangouting with you, reading posts, and listening to your feedback about this.  over the past couple months we’ve quietly rolled out several hangouts improvements to help facilitate good conversations and curb the less desirable ones. this is something we will continue to develop.  we won't stop.  thanks for all the feedback so far.  i look forward to talking with as many of you face-to-face-to-face as i can :).

here are some highlights of what we have done so far, plus a new system we are launching today.  keep in mind more features are still coming. 

improving public invites - inviting public to a hangout can change the dynamics of a conversation and bring in surprise guests.  this can be a great way to meet new people.  i've met countless interesting folks this way.  but sometimes people who are new to hangouts do this inadvertently.  and when the public (or anyone new) is invited to a hangout, we think you should know.  so here's what's been released so far:
when someone invites public, we confirm that this is what they intend to do, and we add a little info educating them on what this means.
when anyone invites more people into the hangout, we inform the room that the room invite was extended.  we'll let the room know that a new circle of people or the public was invited;  and we let the room know who extended the invitation.

jerks in the room - sometimes people do join the room who are disruptive.  it happens in real life.  i'm happy that in the vast majority of all hangouts don't have this issue;  unfortunately it is sometimes a real problem.  we've rolled out a few improvements to help. 
when someone gets blocked, everyone else will be asked if they want to also block this person.  what we have learned is that a lot of people are not aware that this is something they can do.  with this change, we will raise the visibility/awareness so that you have a way to protect yourself.  we will proactively ask people to make a decision. 
if someone is blocked by most people in the room, the blocked person will be escorted to the door...  they'll be dropped from the hangout, and not allowed back in that hangout.

we know that it’s not enough to just deal with jerks after they’ve come in and disrupted the hangout.  and simply dropping them from one room risks having them go through every public hangout one by one.  that only spreads the problem around.  we can do better.  so we’ve been working hard to block them from the system completely.   here’s how:

first, identify and block them!   with the data we get from your report signals, we can identify who’s misbehaving in public hangouts.  we see this from patterns of confirming reports.  we now identify these people, we block them from joining or creating any public hangouts.   please help by continuing to use “block” as appropriate.

second, don’t let them create new accounts!  blocking their account by itself doesn’t solve the problem if they can just create a new account and hop right in.  so we have a new system we are launching to identify accounts that seem relatively fresh.  we will ask these people to confirm their account with an sms message, making it harder and more costly to misbehave in hangouts.  this will roll out over the next several days starting today.

finally, sometimes you just want to hang with other adults.  no, i'm NOT talking about interactions that violate our terms of use that could result losing hangout privileges or google+ account suspension.  i'm talking about those advanced math and physics jokes and stuff like that :P.  you know what i mean...

for those times that you have a great adult math or science joke you have to tell, we've rolled out the ability for you to create 18+ hangouts. 

for those "other" adult conversations that DO violate our terms of use, please continue to report them and send evidence when you can.  it helps identify and remove the jerks from our system.

.chee

ps.  a math joke for you:
q: why did the chicken cross the road?
a: to find a vector orthogonal to itself and the road.  

hmm... i suppose i should have marked this post as 18+ now...

#googleplusupdate  


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