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Comment by dmitryminkovsky | Hacker News Reader

I hadn't seen Slowly. That's awesome—thanks for sharing. I really like how it's tied to physical distance. I really want to add more delivery modes, with geographical distance being one possible factor.

For me a big deal is not just the slow delivery, but the inability to instantly send as well. The presence of a send button has this effect of making me send things that aren't ready. I don't intend Pony to encourage people to edit and edit and edit forever, but I've found in my personal usage that sometimes I write a message, put it in my outbox, and then some number of hours later I'll think of something randomly and edit it a bit. Or I'll change my mind and delete it.

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One of the remarkable things (in the context of this age) about reading history is that you see just how many people used to write letters in heated moments and then choose not to send them once they'd cooled down. The histories of presidents are littered with such moments, and I often juxtapose that fact with social media. How often has the ability to send something instantly allowed each of us to expose our worst self to people?

The ability to edit really is a wonderful feature. I find that I perpetually tweak forum/social media/Slack posts a minute or two after posting, just to improve clarity.

The idea of email (even if it carries with it some versioning history) that is editable is really nice.

Is there a way to interface Pony with email directly, so that an app isn't required?

I can imagine giving ISL@ponymail.com out to people with the clear expectation that my SLA for a reply is 24-48 hours instead of instantaneous and that my SLA for their correspondence is also similar.

I am constitutionally unable to proofread before sending, and conversely unable to _not_ proofread after sending. It's bizarre.

I wish GMail's "delay send" feature had a much longer maximum time...

Wow. That is exactly my experience but I've never been able to articulate it that way. "Constitutionally unable." Thank you.

I also identify with this 100%. It's probably a personality flaw of some sort.

I think some buffer in the brain gets cleared when you send the message, and you see it with fresh eyes.

Gmail's delay is fairly effective for giving time to catch some typos or remembering you meaant to add another line.

It's not really long enough for deciding, after some thought, that maybe I shouldn't have sent that. (Though I'm pretty good at self-censoring these days.

Random thought. Try replacing the “send” action in your brain with “stand up”. For me I think “send” is almost a knee jerk reaction, almost a fidget respond where the monkey brain doesn’t like to sit still so it will do the action it sees next. So maybe “stand up” could be an action that satisfies monkey brain while also buying you time to reflect and transition mental states to a reviewing mindset.

It drives me crazy when people post in Slack and then often edit their message after sending. Just edit and then send. Otherwise people will have to basically ignore your first message and try to remember to check back in a couple minutes when you are done editing...

I wonder if you could write some sort of filter that would let you, as a reader, not see messages right when they arrive. Maybe let them "fade in", and only show up as unread when they've solidified a little while.

That's what the typing indicator is for. Just type, edit, then send

Sorry for the slow response!

I also tweak a bit after posting, and that Pony helps with that. I don't usually edit and edit forever, but it helps me get the message how I want it.

> Is there a way to interface Pony with email directly, so that an app isn't required?

Right now there is not, and I'm not sure it makes sense to add one. The first version of Pony was actually an email service, because I wanted it to be as accessible and useful as possible. It turned out that because email comes with its own set of norms and expectations, many people perceived the email version of Pony to be anti-social if not even borderline hostile. It was pretty disappointing because I wanted to make something that was pro-social. With everyone on Pony, everyone is on board and the expectations are totally clear.

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