notebook / cleanup / product
Teaching Pom to do less
We changed how Pomvox tidies up your words, so that when it isn't sure, it leaves them alone. This is where the promise, "never what you didn't," comes from.
Pom’s shorthand
- Pomvox used to remove every "like" and treat every "actually" as a correction. Sometimes that changed what people meant
- We rewrote its instructions around one rule: when in doubt, leave it as you said it
- A stray um is a small annoyance. A changed meaning is a broken promise
When Pomvox tidies up your words, it can get things wrong in two ways. It can leave an um in. Or it can change what you meant. The first is a little annoying. The second is much worse, because most people don't reread before they hit send, and then the email says something they never said.
Our first set of instructions was focused on catching every um. It told Pomvox to remove filler words like "um," "uh," "like," and "you know." It also said that whenever you change your mind mid-sentence, keep only the new version, and it listed "actually" as a sign you'd changed your mind.
Take those rules literally, the way a computer does, and the problems show up fast. "It works like a charm" loses its "like." "That's actually fine" gets treated as a correction. And "send it Tuesday, I mean before noon" loses Tuesday, even though you were adding a detail, not changing the day.
The new rule
We rewrote the instructions around one line at the very top: when in doubt, leave it as spoken. Doing too little is always better than changing what someone meant.
Everything else got more careful to match:
- Only remove filler words when they really are filler, not when they mean something.
- Never shorten, summarize, expand, or rearrange what you said.
- Don't guess at words that might have been misheard. Leave them as they are.
- Only treat something as a correction when you clearly replaced one thing with another. If you added a detail, keep both.
- Only make a list when you actually ask for one.
Every example above comes straight from those new instructions. We wrote the mistakes right into them, so Pomvox can see exactly where the line is.
The tradeoff we chose
Doing less means a few ums and some clumsy phrasing will slip through. We decided that's the right side to be on. You can spot a leftover um at a glance. You might not spot a changed meaning until someone replies to it.
You can spot a leftover um at a glance. You might not spot a changed meaning until someone replies to it.
That choice became the promise on the site: I write down what you said. Never what you didn't.