I advocate against automatic punctuation because there's so many times ending the last message with a period is just passive aggressive that I think this feature is counterproductive =) I would remove it entirely (even if I understand where it comes from)

I agree. The issue I see with this is that peaople who type a message, hit Enter then continue typing the last sentence wiill not use punctuation most of the time which will make for some very confusing messages. The point of the append-based system it to make messages and conversation easier to parse, not harder!

That said, I think you have a point. In the match thread we tested live conversations with, I did start a few appends with hitting [Delete] a couple times to remove the foll stop that was automatically appended to my message, and that should not be something users are expected to do every time.

One possible fix could be that a full stop (.) is appended to the message only when:

1. The user has added no punctuation at the end of their last message
2. Starts appending without adding a line break.

This might be a little more complicated, but maaaaybe...

I understand your pov though. Maybe only add the period if they type a new sentence behind older ones and not before? So that if we leave the last sentence hanging it doesn't end with a period?

Fix

The punctuation system I had outlined above risks being confusing and I want to avoid the frustration of users not knowing when and where punctuation will be added automatically, so I am attempting another fix. You can now deactivate automatic punctuation in the user settings.

Follow-up

@Miaromashka Does this resolve your issue, or does this fix not work for you? I'm open to suggestions as I know both the feature and fix are a little weird.

I don't know if I'm going to change the punctuation system in the future or not, so I'll mark this thread as $partially resolved but will not archive it. Future users, you are welcome (even encouraged) to share your opinions on automatic punctuation here.

Good for me if you can keep it but I can get rid of it.