Your prefs: BBS or real-time chat?

I’m sure this has been done before, but I searched on “chat” and didn’t see it, so …

When I was in college and first learning about the ways this Internet thing could suck away your soul, not to mention hours of your time, I spent a lot of time on IRC. A friend of mine was a big fan of ISCA, which was a text-based BBS. We would have the occasional debates where she would try to convince me that BBSs were better than real-time chat, and I would try to convince her of the opposite.

At the time, I liked real-time better because I was on the computer for the purpose of having fun and talking to people, and it was less fun to sit around and wait for someone to compose a reply to a post on a board.
Now that I’m working (or faking it), it’s the other way around for me. I generally prefer boards instead of real-time because it’s easier to squeeze in a BBS conversation in between doing work tasks. I don’t often have time to just sit down and talk to people anymore.

So, out of curiosity, for those of you who use or have used both BBs and real-time chat:
Which one do you prefer?
Are there certain things you’d rather do in one format than the other? Why?

I prefer posting on message boards to chat, always have. With a message board I can think about what I want to write and compose it with more thought going into it. I can and often do make a few revisions before posting (such as this one). In live chat there’s not as much time to think, so I find it harder to communicate intelligently this way. I’m also put off by the way most chat users seem to completely disregard spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. I just can’t take anyone seriously who writes, “hi how r u i m fine lol rotflmao”. About 90% of what I see posted in chat rooms is, well, chat, little if any substance. Message boards, especially moderated boards such as this one, usually contain more intelligent and meaningful information.

For quick messages, I prefer chat. “How’s it going, I’m fine, etc.” kind of stuff.

For anything that requires more thought than remembering what I ate yesterday, I prefer message boards. It’s much eaiser to come up with a coherent post if I don’t have the ‘pressure’ of tossing something over for the other person/people to read before they die of old age. :wink:


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Prefer boards.

I agree with dwc1970, If I feel like discussing my day with someone (or cybersex ;)) then a chat room is the way to go, and I rarely, if ever, do this anymore. I have never learned anything meaningful or had a serious conversation with someone in a real time chat room, at least not like in this message board. So, another one for BBSs.

Untill I found this BBS I would have said that Java Chat (specificly Yahoo chat rooms) rocked.
But the superiority of the users here makes this my all time favorite site on the net. So I guess by defalt I’m a BBS Gal.

i leik mesage boards bcuz they give u the oportunity to compose and edit your thoughts.

Ick, I can’t keep it up.

Correspondence makes for better communication than real-time conversation allows. How often have you met a fascinating author that you looked forward to meeting, only to find that they don’t come off as nearly so interesting in conversation?

The same holds true for on-line communication.

And don’t get me started about the frustration of having to wait for people with poor typing abilities—

Da boards.

I would have said chat right away, but after seeing the benefits mentioned… I have to agree… it is also a more “permanent” method of chat allowing me to go back often and see what has been said… Dopers are the most intellectual and fascinating people I have communicated with…

I like the advantage the board has over chat in that you don’t have to be on-line at the same time with someone to read their message. It’s like we’re all here at the same time, but conversing more deliberately. :wink:

Bulletin boards, definitely. I’ve been using the Internet since 1987, and I’m not too big of a chat fan. It doesn’t seem efficient, for some reason.

Boards, by a long shot. I can easily understand how somebody who’s feeling conversational right now might prefer chat, but the first sentence of Larry Mudd’s post demonstrates a lot of what I don’t like about chat.

Besides the real-time typo-laden nature of chat, it also does not lend itself to meaningful discussion. I can flirt on the elevator.

You get to know people a lot better a lot faster in a realtime chat medium, but there’s no persistance of information, which makes “story time” and “ask the blah” discussions like we have here impossible. My verdict is that both have their uses, but for every day chat, nothing can beat IRC.