The chat

At the bottom of the board, folded away, is Chat. It's one long conversation, no threads, with the newest message at the bottom just above the box.

Tap the folded line, or the Chat button under the road, and it opens at the newest message. Scroll up for older ones. Type in the box and press Say it, and the page comes back to what you said, with the box ready for the next thing.

On a computer, or anything with a keyboard, Enter sends and Shift+Enter starts a new line. On a phone, Return starts a new line like it usually does, and Say it sends.

If you use a screen reader, each message is headed by who said it, so you can hop between messages by heading. Each Pin to board button says which message it's for: Pin to board: Tom, "Who's bringing the urn…".

What it isn't

The chat never tells anyone anything by itself. Nothing you say there gets texted, emailed or pushed to anybody, unless you mention someone by name (see below).

So it's safe to hang around in. And it can never be where a decision gets announced.

The promise at the top

Open the chat and the first thing you'll see is:

Decisions get pinned to the board. If you're not in the chat, you'll still hear about anything that matters.

It's up to the organisers to keep that promise. The app doesn't force it. If the chat's been busy for a day and nothing new has gone on the board, organisers get one quiet line asking whether there's anything to pin. Nobody else has to police it.

Mentions

Type @ and someone's name to talk to them directly: @Rachel, can you bring the urn?

• Which name? The one people know them by in the chat. A full name always works. A first name works as long as only one person has it, so if there are two Toms, @Tom won't reach either of them, but @Tom Baker will.
• Where does it end? Where the letters do. @Jo, reaches Jo.
• Not yourself. You can't mention yourself.
• The row of names. Above the box there's a row of who's here: @Rachel @Tom @Jo. Tap one to drop it into your message. Start typing a name, @To, and the row narrows to the matches. Tap @Tom and it finishes the name you'd started, rather than adding a second one. With more than a dozen people, it just says Mention someone with @Name.
• Small screens. On a short screen (a phone on its side, or zoomed right in), the row stays hidden until you type an @.

A name that worked shows up in ember, and that person gets one notification, on whichever ways they've switched on for mentions. If they've turned mentions off, or stopped everything from this event, their name still lights up and the mention just waits in the chat for them. Reloading the page never sends it twice.

Pin to board

If you're allowed to pin, every message has a Pin to board button. It opens a little sheet on the message, showing you what the notice would look like: the message's first line as the title, and the rest as the detail.

If the first line's too long for a title, it's cut at the first full stop, or at a whole word, and then the whole message becomes the detail. If the message started with a name (@Tom, are you driving?), the name comes off the title, because the board's for everyone.

Then you can:

• Pin quietly. It goes on the board and nobody's told. People see it next time they look.
• Notify everyone. The same, but as an announcement: everyone gets a text or email and is asked to tap Got it. Before you press it, the sheet tells you who it'll reach (Goes out to 3 by text and 2 by email) and roughly what the texts will cost. You'll only see this one if you're allowed to notify everyone.
• Edit first. This opens the normal post form with the message already in it, for when you want to reword it or turn it into a question. It's a starting point; it doesn't have to match.

Neither of the first two asks "are you sure?", because the sheet's already shown you what'll happen. Once a message is pinned, its button says Pinned instead, and takes you to the notice. You can't pin the same message twice while it's on the board.

On the board, the notice still belongs to whoever said it: their figure and name, then pinned by Rachel (or sent by, if it went to everyone). If you pin your own message, it looks like any other notice of yours. Deleting the message later doesn't change who the board says it was from.

Unpinning

Something pinned quietly can come off the board again. Unpin is in the ⋯ menu on the notice, and on the message in the chat, for whoever pinned it, whoever said it, and any organiser. It doesn't ask, because nobody was told about it in the first place. The notice leaves the board, the message stays in the chat, and you can pin it again later.

Something sent with Notify everyone can't be unpinned, because everyone's already had it. It can be taken down like any other announcement (see Posting notices), which leaves a short line on the board. After that, the message can be pinned again.

Deleting

You can delete your own messages, and organisers can delete anything. It's in the ⋯ menu on the message, and it asks first.

A deleted message leaves a line behind: removed by Rachel. The words are properly gone. The line stays so that anyone who was reading a minute ago knows what happened, and who did it.

The flame

Next to the word Chat there's a small flame. The more messages in the last day, the bigger and warmer it gets, so you can tell at a glance whether it's worth opening. Beside it, in plain words: "10 messages today", or "quiet" if nothing's been said.

The chat keeps the last 200 messages.

The daily digest

If you'd rather catch up on the chat all at once, switch on the digest on the Notifications tab of Your settings (see How you're reached). That's one email a day across all your events, and only if there was any chat. Each event gets its own section with its own link, up to thirty lines, then …and N more in the chat.

It goes out at an hour each event's organisers choose, in that event's timezone. The settings page tells you when. It's email only, never a text, and a day with no chat sends nothing.