What happens when you leave the lobby

As more people found their way into the lobby, we needed a new way to see what kind of conversations were actually happening. So we taught the room to write things up instead.

The summary bot

After a person leaves the lobby, a summary of their conversation — including the back and forth — is generated automatically. Where the AI moderator watches over live messages, this one only shows up afterwards: nobody needs to sit and read the raw messages to know what went on.

What it has seen so far

It has worked great! The summary is only generated when the person was actually active, so it is easy to see when people come and go without saying anything at all.

When people do get talking, the summaries keep landing on the same surprise: a lot of people prefer private messages over the general lobby. That is not what we expected — a free chat room sounds like it should fill up as one big open conversation. In practice, people seem perfectly happy to message a random stranger directly.

What we have done with this information

The private message system and the design of the portal have been improved to make that flow as easy as possible. If that is how people want to use the lobby, the site should not get in their way.

Curious how the room works? Read How It Works or jump straight into the lobby.