clarify behavior for group messages

[simon-weber]

Someone just emailed me asking if responding to group messages to be turned off. I wasn't sure if group messages would even trigger a response.

Here's what I sent back:

I just tested this, and the behavior is a little bit odd:

• if somebody adds you to a group conversation and you don't join: one autoresponse for each group message, sent directly to the person who sent the message (ie, it doesn't show up in the group message thread, but as a separate dm).
• if you join the group conversation: no autoresponses for subsequent messages.

This is because Google's api sends me a message like "I've added you to a group conversation using Hangouts..." for each message in the group thread. I could potentially filter those out and not respond, but it does seem like useful behavior (since they otherwise might expect you to respond). Maybe the ideal thing to do would be to respond once instead of multiple times?

Anyway, I think everything will be fine so long as you're already in these group chats. If instead your group chats get created and deleted often, then you'll probably end up sending lots of autoresponses by accident.

This should probably be documented somewhere.

[simon-weber]

I think this works as expected with the addition of #2.

[simon-weber]

Someone else just emailed me asking for responding to group messages to be turned on 😀