Chat Box

I saw a trial one a while ago, was wondering if it was coming back or not. It's a neat function when it works properly.

Interesting idea, though I never noticed a drop off in posts on the old CF even though chat usually had people in it. And yeah, I hear ya. On days off, the refresh button gets a work out.

There was a chat here when I first signed up. No one ever used it.

Putting a chat box would also hinder the usefulness of how a forum works, unfortunately. And what fishNAbowl mentioned earlier, we did have a chat box here, but it was just never used.

PokeSephiroth wrote:Putting a chat box would also hinder the usefulness of how a forum works, unfortunately.

Hinder?   

Yes, hinder. It would basically make people use the forum less like a forum, because people would just hang out in the chat, then too many topics would be talked about, because it would be more convenient to post their query on there than it would, to create a topic, etc.

It's also similar to why the portal page has been discussed about if we should get rid of it or not. The portal page, while convenient to keep track of certain topics, only focuses on the topic that gets a lot of posts, thus bumping other topics to the bottom of the list, once a topic is off of the portal list, it's usually ignored, because a lot of us (myself included)  usually never go beyond the portal section, so topics that aren't on the portal page become ignored.

Without the portal, users would be encouraged to look through the forum, now it may seem more inconvenient to do that, but that's why we have a search option. :p

Another reason why chat room isn't functional, is because we also like to save/archive topics, whether they are new or locked/old because other potential users (new and old) can still refer to those topics for future reference, or if they are new, any information would still be there for them to read. A chat wouldn't be able to be archived, so if someone talks about something with relevant info, it eventually gets lost and can never be traced back.

Now with a chat, I see it going one of either two ways.

1, it becomes so congested with so many active users, that everyone eventually stops using the forum and just chats in the chat room.

2, it gets completely ignored like last time.

Also, I think our forum software is limited to what it can do because it's a free service.

I believe we are still looking for a good forum service that we can transfer to, hopefully to one that can keep all our data intact (at a decent price that won't cost a tail and a fin). A haha see what I did there?

Interesting. I can't comment on how it worked here before as it was before I was active, but we found on CF that forum posts actually increased after a good chat session ... ie african keepers would see a pic posted of a SA dwarf and then start a thread about it.

I have only been on one forum that had a chat though, so it could very well been an anomaly.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love a chat box because then I could just come in and say hello once in a while lol, but I think for the better of the forum, not having a chat room/box would be the way to go.

I spose, having a chat room would also make it difficult to moderate, if things were to get out of hand or if a flame war breaks lose, thus making other chatters uncomfortable.

It's a long list of pros and cons..

Now I'm craving for something sriracha-y. THANKS A LOT!

BY HAHAHAHAHA!

Yeah, I can see you point with the smaller membership we have here given our location ... an international site can have a chat and not dilute the amount of forum posts.

True on the moderation as well ... how would we boot people for excess sriracha talk?

That's the thing... You can't. ;p
Estahp eeeeht!