Poll: what number comes at the beginning?

[jducoeur]

One of the most important concepts in CommYou's new integration with IM is the notion of a "thread slot" -- the number that is assigned to a particular thread of conversation. Since you are potentially juggling several conversations in a single IM window, you need an easy way to refer to a specific one.

At the moment, I'm allowing ten slots at any given time (which seems about as many as you can keep track of anyway). These are, of course, numbered 0 - 9. One of the first points made yesterday (by laurion) is that that's pretty geeky. Every computer science student knows that the number line starts with zero, but most other people in the world thinks it starts with one.

I suspect he's right, and am leaning towards simply slicing slot 0 away, so you get threads 1 - 9. But before I go changing the code, I figure I may as well do a quick survey of opinion among my admittedly-unrepresentative friends:
[Poll #1228967]

Comments

[dsrtao]

It could start with 1 and end with 0, as a substitute for 10. Across most keyboards, the order is 1234567890.

But, haven't you heard of the Law of Non-Random Numbers? There can naturally be 0 of something, 1 of something, or N things. Anything else is an imposed limit. If you've got a power of 2 or (n^2)-1, at least that suggests a data representation limit. Round numbers in decimal sound really forced.

Personally, I rarely have more than 3 or 4 IM conversations open at a time, and almost always 1 or 2.

[ilaine-dcmrn.livejournal.com]

I should assume from the question that the thread number will show in the interface somehow? Because if you just put the name of the other party in the thread you could start numbering from Q internally if it makes you happy.

If you are showing numbers, go with 1-9. Normal people will not feel warm and fuzzy about zero relativity.

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

I think you are making a classic computer geek mistake of mistating the problem. The problem isn't how one counts—starting with zero or one—the problem is "What kind of number should I use?" Conversation Number Zero may be placed in the database in the zeroth position, may be named "Conversation Number Zero" as I just have, or may use thread zero -- but it's still the FIRST conversation, and displaying the number ONE is the way to make that clear. For your own peace of mind, you may prefer to have it also use thread ONE and occupy database entry ONE, but that's YOUR problem, not your users', and should be invisible to them. To put it another way, the internal name can be anything you like, the DISPLAY NAME should be ONE.

"Conversation Number XXX" is, of course, ambiguous -- does that mean the Conversation NAMED XXX, or the XXXth conversation. I think that that ambiguity lies at the heart of the problem, and you want to stomp it out. Don't let implementation details sneak into your UI.

[baron-steffan.livejournal.com]

The other commenters so far have all made good arguments, but it seems to me that if you're geeky enough to be using LJ/Facebook/CommYou in the first place -- and y'all uber-geeks out there should realize that among hoi polloi of the rest of the world, that is pretty geeky, in and of itself -- then you're geeky enough to understand a number line that starts at zero.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Usability is about presenting to the user what is more natural, and makes your application easier to grasp without having to think about it.

The masses don't start numbering things at "0". They start at "1". You should start where they do.

[baavgai.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid starting at zero only makes sense to programmers. Even then, it can take a while to beat it into them.

For basically "normal" humans, one seems the better choice.

[mindways]

1.

Unless there's something special/unusual about #0.

(For instance: If you're numbering comments, I could see the original post being #0.)

But that doesn't seem to be the case here - and even then, it could be confusing.

[cellio]

I think some sort of label would be more meaningful than numbers, especially if there's a limited set. (So let's see: I'm participating in 9 conversations, I get bored with #s 4 and 7 and say "go away", then I want to join another, so it has to take over one of those slots, except that I spent hours mentally associating that number with something else entirely... ack.)

Subject lines are good for conversations but verbose for IM. But subject lines can be compressed -- one key word or an abbreviation -- at a little more pixel load but less cognitive load than numbers. In a later use case (I don't expect this in an early version), it would really rock if clients get to set that tag locally. 'Cause the conversation might be mainly about new features in Java 7, but I'm watching it because I just got a resume for a senior-guru position from one of the participants. Or it's about styling of 15th-century Italian balli, but I'm really just following the entangled thread about the class that Master So-And-So is going to teach on this at Pennsic. Conversations aren't about the same things to every participant, necessarily.

[laurion]

One of my big arguments for starting at 1 is the layout of the number keys a the top of a qwerty: 1 is on the left. If I have three conversations going on, and want to identify them by layout and switch between them fluently, I want the first to be at the left side, as everything else goes right from there. The farthest right key as the first conversation when the farthest left key is the second is a _bad_ idea.