How do you feel about having a chat box running on the forum?

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This is taken from the Suggestion and Comments forum...

apparentley I started the thread in the worst possible manner... so lets see where a poll takes us,

Advantages of this chat box from my perspective is it Bringing the community together more and I think in general just having a positive impact on the use of this forum, Ive heard people mention that the forums would be used less as a result and revenue would be lost from ads on this site etc BUT! IMHO I think that people would happily spend longer on the forums and would post even more, as it just makes the forum more sociable.

I'm not going to be like "ok Ive chatted away on the chat box so I'm not going to browse the forums, I'm just going to come on this forum and chat in the chat box on this forum and then leave...", frankly I think the people on this forum who think that way aren't going to stick around on the forums for long or regularly post regardless of if a chat box is there or not, you post on the forum to get everyones advice and feedback, asking your question in the chat box limits your advice to who evers online at the time, so people would probaly make there post in the relevant forum and chat away about random rubbish on the chat box, no harm done there

The only disadvantage from my perspective and can be worked around anyhow
Rax you mentioned a problem with spam, can't you just limit the amount of times you can chat in any given 3 or 5 seconds perhaps and even give mods, senior mods, admins the ability to temporarily ban people from using the chat box for that current day or mute them temporarily should they be spamming or causing any greif.

 

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We had a chat facility before, turned on for specified periods of time once a week.

Ultimately, as Bluerinse said in your last thread, its up to SimonV and/or the technical capability of implementing a chat facility into VBulletin.

However, you are forgetting a very simple consideration: cost. A professional chat plugin for VBulletin is going to cost money. Who pays for that?

The extra continuous traffic between all the browsers with the site open (even when you arent navigating this communication is going to take place every few seconds). Currently, this only takes place when you navigate (or, on the who's online, every minute or so). This increased traffic will increase the bandwidth requirements from the hosting provider for the site, which in turn increases the cost for running the site. Who foots that bill?

Personally, outwith the above considerations, I dont think a permanent chat facility is a good thing. This is a forum, if you want IRC, there are plenty of IRC facilities around, go make a channel and let people here know its there.

When you have to construct a post, you have to take the time to think about what you are going to say, and you cut down on the useless ****e that comes out of peoples mouths all the time. With a chat facility its just going to be filled with useless ****e.

In my opinion it will be more of a detraction from the site, rather than an addition. Hell, I didnt even like the chat facility that much when it was running before.

 

I think that most people dip in and out of this forum a couple of times a day so any chat feature is likely to be a bit disjointed.

It's hard enough to follow a thread sometimes where people are supposed to be talking about roughly the same subject - so goodness knows what a free-for-all would be like.

Anyway, I don't type very fast so I always look like an idiot by responding to something that was said 5 minutes ago after the conversation has moved on.

So it's a no from me!

 

Its a no from me

 

Separate to the shout/talkbox which is being proposed, you would have seen my posts regarding an IRC channel.

My thoughts:
I've had a bnc for the past 6 or so years due to being on IRC so much and have it for another 4 due to a deal I purchased. A few years ago though I disappeared from all of the IRC networks that I used to go on and my bnc was just sat there doing nothing. I recently connected to the irc network freenode [irc.freenode.net (i think)] and found that it has so many useful channels which are filled with people, with topics of:
Windows OS, Windows Server, MSSQL\MYSQL, Linux, Telephony, Juniper\Cisco stuff and much more.
The topics of these channels are relevant to certifications. They detail experience.

A majority of people are in there to find fixes for problems and offer help. For me, just idling in those channels and reading it every now and again, I can learn something new regarding the technologies we're looking to be certified in. Generally you can see the problem, few diagnosis steps, resolution and explanation of cause.

I don't see why IRC is frowned upon in this forum.. or rather why nobody has started a channel like the ones I mentioned before but for advice and information on certifications. Doing so on the above mentioned IRC network for example, and networking\educating the users in other channels could possibly bring a few hundred-thousand users to this forum.

Anyway, I have created a channel in there called #certtalk (obviously not related to the forums) which people are free to join if they wish. The channel will be used for both off-topic and on-topic of certs.

Below are the details you will need, should you want to pop on

-daz

 

It's not really "frowned upon". I like IRC. I just don't see it as beneficial for this forum. I've seen chat features implemented on forums, and you know what happens? People post in the chat box, and then leave because nobody else is on. Essentially, it works out to be exactly the same as if they had posted a new thread in the forum anyway. So what's the point?