Hi y’all,
It’s probably a sign of how sad my evenings have been lately, but I’ve spent many an eve of late browsing the dope, and, upon reading all the recent threads that strike my eye, feeling unfulfilled. My dope-meter never gets past 90% capacity. In other words, I still want to interact with the dope, and reading archives just doesn’t do it for me. I want live interaction! This got me to thinking… maybe we could institute a chat room? I’ve seen it done on other boards, so I know it’s not a technical impossibility.
Just off the top of my head, moderation might be an issue, but I hardly think it’s an insurmountable one. I bet there are lots of other people who would appreciate a chat room. Hell, it could even amount to live answering of queries that many lurkers are too timid to type out. It could be an avenue for further discussion if things get too convoluted in a single thread. It could cure AIDS. Hmmm… maybe that last one is a stretch.
Well, I’m pretty passionate about the idea. What does everyone think?
-Auto
I may be wrong, but didn’t one of the splinter boards implement a chat room? And didn’t their post count tail right off as most of the people there moved into the chat room?
My opinion, for what its worth, is that I have zero interest in a chat room. But I would be concerned at the effect one would have on the number of posts made to the forums per day, the forums being of course the area of the SDMB I am interested in.
I also have a conception of chat boards as a place where petty feuds and silly whining will fester. Considering that the level of petty whining on this board is starting to become very off-putting, I would suggest avoiding anything that adds to it.
I would expect a successful chat room to drop the posts on the message board to a trickle. Knowing the posters here I expect they would stick to the message board and not bother with a chat room though. I did support the poll feature and that has been a hit. Try a poll to see how many would use chat.
Again, based on the chat room that used to exist, I would say that those concerns are pretty baseless. What actually happened was that the chat room died, because there weren’t that many people interested in chatting.
I have seen other boards die because of a chat room. However, I am not averse to a chat room, either. It could be tried, I suppose, but the boards are (supposedly) all about revenue, so the chat room may not bring enough revenue.
my understanding is that the chat function on Domebo caused that board to get blocked by a lot of firewalls for posters who posted at work. What Exit? might be able to comment.
I vote no on the chatroom. Things tend to get heated enough here with just post and reply. In chat, the “fuck you. No, fuck YOU” stuff will likely take over. Do you really want to see me engage Dio in realtime? That ain’t gonna end well for anybody.
If you want to see chat, start an IRC channel and publicize it, but brace yourself for the inevitable drama and bullshit should it see any traffic. Better yet, don’t start an IRC channel. Please, for the sake of the greater Throbbing Brain, don’t.
Don’t sweat it.