After testing out google+ hangouts and doing a 2 hour screen share there with CannibalSmith I want to recommend using the hangouts instead of tinychat.
Sharing your screen can be more beneficial than turning your camera on for many reasons—other people can easily see when you are procrastinating (if you are doing work on your computer) and they can scold you immediately. On the other hand when you have your camera on, nobody knows if you are working or just facebooking. relevant post
Sharing your screen however has some obvious disadvantages and it can be more privacy-invading then having your camera on but hey, if you are revealing something personal on your screen then you are probably not working. There are also some cases where screen sharing can be ineffective (for example when your task at hand is to read a book or to do anything not on your computer) but places such as hangouts allow you to easily switch between your camera and screen and provide a ton of other features that can be somewhat useful. In addition to that you can write apps for hangouts which can also be utilized at some point.
As for my ~2 hour screen share with CannibalSmith—it went great, I didn’t take a single break in that time nor checked facebook, gmail, skype etc. and I am one of those people that check everything 10+ times an hour.
P.S. I am writing this during a group pomodoro on tinychat because I was too lazy to do it otherwise.
Edit: Of course if there are other applications which we can use that have the option of sharing your screen then that’ll probably work well, too.
Screensharing is indeed very effective in a 1-on-1 session, but I think the webcam view is quite valuable for different reasons: It provides the sense of actual people whom you’re working with on the other side. Part of the reason why the study room works is because of the community feeling you get. When the community starts a pomodoro, you join.
Of course, google hangouts support switching between screensharing and webcam on the fly, so this isn’t an argument against hangouts: I just wanted to mention the value of the webcams.
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I’m trying to imagine screen sharing in a study room now, with for example 6 people. I think it’s possible that a shared screen can be distracting to some—much more so than having a webcam. This, too, was mentioned in the relevant post:
I had to set a timer (for between 5 and 11 minutes depending on circumstances) to remind me to check Vladimir’s screen (resetting the timer manually after every check). If I did not, I either spent too much time looking at his screen or let him go too long without monitoring.
I had to set a timer (for between 5 and 11 minutes depending on circumstances) to remind me to check Vladimir’s screen (resetting the timer manually after every check). If I did not, I either spent too much time looking at his screen or let him go too long without monitoring.
I actually imagine this to be less of a problem when you have more people as you don’t need to think about checking the others’ screens at all a la the bystander effect. And even if people check other people’s screens really rarely, just knowing that there are multiple lesswrongers who can actually catch you procrastinating should be good enough in most cases. Also a quick glance at the hangout can quickly tell you if someone is procrastinating in a really obvious way such as being on facebook, youtube etc. In addition I actually speculate that if the chat is big enough there is a reasonable chance that some people will spend a large fraction of their time in the hangout just monitoring other people. This action will not be productive at all for the observer but at least it will be beneficial for the room as a whole. (I am in no way saying that we need such observers, just that they might show up on their own).
I am not sure if it will actually work in the way that I imagine it to work and you might be right that it will be too distracting but a group chat involving screen sharing is definitely worth a try at this point.
I’m working with a few other people on setting up a more robust system. I’d like to give it a little time to get that set up before we start switching where we direct the majority of people. I would like the momentum that we’ve started to keep going and not have it get fragmented.
That said, it would be awesome if you grab people who are game to run experiments with you and run them and report back about feature recommendations based on that.
After testing out google+ hangouts and doing a 2 hour screen share there with CannibalSmith I want to recommend using the hangouts instead of tinychat.
Sharing your screen can be more beneficial than turning your camera on for many reasons—other people can easily see when you are procrastinating (if you are doing work on your computer) and they can scold you immediately. On the other hand when you have your camera on, nobody knows if you are working or just facebooking. relevant post
Sharing your screen however has some obvious disadvantages and it can be more privacy-invading then having your camera on but hey, if you are revealing something personal on your screen then you are probably not working. There are also some cases where screen sharing can be ineffective (for example when your task at hand is to read a book or to do anything not on your computer) but places such as hangouts allow you to easily switch between your camera and screen and provide a ton of other features that can be somewhat useful. In addition to that you can write apps for hangouts which can also be utilized at some point.
As for my ~2 hour screen share with CannibalSmith—it went great, I didn’t take a single break in that time nor checked facebook, gmail, skype etc. and I am one of those people that check everything 10+ times an hour.
P.S. I am writing this during a group pomodoro on tinychat because I was too lazy to do it otherwise.
Edit: Of course if there are other applications which we can use that have the option of sharing your screen then that’ll probably work well, too.
Screensharing is indeed very effective in a 1-on-1 session, but I think the webcam view is quite valuable for different reasons: It provides the sense of actual people whom you’re working with on the other side. Part of the reason why the study room works is because of the community feeling you get. When the community starts a pomodoro, you join.
Of course, google hangouts support switching between screensharing and webcam on the fly, so this isn’t an argument against hangouts: I just wanted to mention the value of the webcams.
--
I’m trying to imagine screen sharing in a study room now, with for example 6 people. I think it’s possible that a shared screen can be distracting to some—much more so than having a webcam. This, too, was mentioned in the relevant post:
I actually imagine this to be less of a problem when you have more people as you don’t need to think about checking the others’ screens at all a la the bystander effect. And even if people check other people’s screens really rarely, just knowing that there are multiple lesswrongers who can actually catch you procrastinating should be good enough in most cases. Also a quick glance at the hangout can quickly tell you if someone is procrastinating in a really obvious way such as being on facebook, youtube etc. In addition I actually speculate that if the chat is big enough there is a reasonable chance that some people will spend a large fraction of their time in the hangout just monitoring other people. This action will not be productive at all for the observer but at least it will be beneficial for the room as a whole. (I am in no way saying that we need such observers, just that they might show up on their own).
I am not sure if it will actually work in the way that I imagine it to work and you might be right that it will be too distracting but a group chat involving screen sharing is definitely worth a try at this point.
I’m working with a few other people on setting up a more robust system. I’d like to give it a little time to get that set up before we start switching where we direct the majority of people. I would like the momentum that we’ve started to keep going and not have it get fragmented.
That said, it would be awesome if you grab people who are game to run experiments with you and run them and report back about feature recommendations based on that.