This.
This is pretty much what was the beginning of the end of me @ DoMeBo. After the chat was implement, things just sorta got less and less fun and shit just got really petty.
Funny. Doesn’t Giraffe have a chat? It seems to be doing just fine. Of course, the moderation there is much lighter. Oddly enough, it seems to make people nicer.
I think of all the possible positive benefits, and most everyone here thinks of the probable negative outcome. Too bad we cant do a trial run, or do it once a week like somebody mentioned upthread.
We didn’t want to incorporate chat directly into Giraffeboards, but people wanted it. I provided space on the server under another IP and Thren and Ely run the chat. There was also some interest in games but again we didn’t want that under the giraffeboard domain either (Giraffe can’t hit sites at his work that have anything to do with gambling).
We ended up folding the games and chat under my music forums so they all use the same login credentials (and my forums have Facebook Connect - so people can use their Facebook credentials if they wish). We link to my forums and chat from giraffeboards but technically they are not part of giraffeboards.com.
We’ve not had a problem with content blockers because we’ve never allowed image posting. I’m pretty sure the gay porn being posted in dumbo chat was the main problem they had with content blocking.
We’ve never had any problem with our chat in the 6 or so months we’ve been running it. As far as I know we’ve never banned anyone or had any moderator actions. I’ve never received a complaint about it. Everyone seems to just get along.
We also haven’t noticed any drop in posting. 90% of the conversations going on in chat wouldn’t be happening on the forums anyway.
Unofficial chatrooms with images disabled work out okay.
Official chatrooms embedded in the front page with hardcore porn and angry sots are not recommended.
:D.
Seriously, you made me giggle.
Again, I hate to keep harping on this, but we have had a trial run. We’ve already had a chat room, and it ran for years, and to the best of my memory it never caused any of the problems that people seem to be scared of here. I’m slightly baffled. I gather that there was some sort of drama on another board that’s scaring people off, so fine, but it seems silly to speculate about what would happen here, when it’s already happened. I don’t care if it’s restarted or not, myself, for the record.
Perhaps because it was never part of the SDMB, and therefore what was said there didn’t bleed over into the boards themselves. Nor would the Mods have had to try to moderate it, since it wasn’t part of the boards.
If the trial run was so successful, why did it die out? 
Because irc chatrooms are so 1998?
Too soon.
Nah.
I never claimed it was terribly successful, just that it didn’t cause all the angst that people seem to be dreading. It did run for several years - close to a decade, I’d bet, though the last few years it was a shadow of its former self.
Kind of like this place.
Wow. Lots of anti-SDMB sentiment in this thread for a discussion about chat.
It’s an inevitable byproduct of reading ATMB.