merch messages Consolidating and Timestamping Merch Messages for Easier Access

[Samueras]

Hey everyone,

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but I recently heard Linus talking about a 4th way to respond to messages, and it reminded me of a long-standing wish I've had. I think it would be fantastic to have a website, forum post, or some other platform where all the merch messages are consolidated, complete with timestamps for when they were answered. It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to implement – perhaps by starting a timer when going live.

While I appreciate the current approach to answering merch messages, I find it has some drawbacks. I've sent several messages myself and often end up skimming through the show a second time to find when my message was addressed. Listening and reading simultaneously can be quite challenging. An even better solution, in my opinion, would be if you could also tag me in Floatplane and YouTube chat when my message is being answered, allowing me to catch it live.

What do you all think?

[Harlem_Shaker]

As an outsider, I think Linus has backed himself into a corner a little bit.  Not saying I'm blaming him or that I'm mad about it.  I think it comes down to his reason for moving away from super chats.  That was something along the lines of "It's broken and we'll never be able to see all of the messages, so instead buy something and we will see your message."  That is obviously not a direct quote, but it was essentially that.  Now that Merch Messages have gotten to be so many, they're now having trouble getting to all of them.  True, they're not (typically) being lost like Super Chats, but they're still not getting to them all.  At least not in a meaningful manner.

All in all, I think it's a good problem to have, but in reality I think it's too large of a scale to address everything during the show and something needs to change.

After having said all of that, I don't think tagging a floatplane user is feasible.  And while it would be reasonably possible to have the dashboard dump some information into a database when a message is replied to and then have that posted to a website, I think the dev time involved in that would not be a high priority.

Just my two cents.