Live Chat Forums

[20 Ton Squirrel]

I had an idea a few days back... live chat forums. I've been toying with the idea ever since on my server. It looks like it's a viable option for me to build a pretty powerful, comprehensive chat environment based off membership and forums here. It would be a Flash client hook'n up to a server-side daemon I've been coding on fer years.

My question to you, gentle reader (and mostly to Jesse), is would it be something you are interested in?

Advantages:

• Quick reponse rate to questions
• Greater sense of community
• Ease of use

Disadvantages:

• More crap to moderate
• More crap to debug
• Questions asked will not be saved for later searches (like anyone does anyway)

Those are the pros and cons I could think of. Share your thoughts, roominate on the matter. I'd like to know. Jesse, if yer interested we can natter about the details.

[Josh]

I say go for it man. It IS hard to moderate chat rooms, etc as someone is not always there to catch the person. But at the same time, you get help immediatly usually.

Josh Dura

[Jesse]

This is another idea we've thought about but ultimately the whole 'no saves' thing put us off. I would guarantee in the first day 10 people would ask the same question. We do have a lot of people searching and finding answers, but it's not apparent because they don't post (of course ). I'm open to hear others' opinions on the matter.

[Tink]

again it involves work but it sounds a good idea to me. i used to be addicted to napster servers chat etc. and again it built up a real good community. i can understand peeps would ask the same questions but it would be good to speak to some of u peeps in like real time!

lol. do i sound lonely?

BLEEDA

[mrfluffy]

it's a good idea, but normally there are only 3-12 people online at a time (when i can get on), and i'd never speak to jesse

[Ricod]

Sounds great ! but, eh ... maybe only for the general chat and quickies ? Also, since this is an international forum with people from all over the world, it may not work ... me myself I'm at GMT +1:00 Anyone more than 8 hours away will probably never chat with each other ...

[red penguin]

I'm all for it, 20 Ton...It'd be a great addition to what's going on here and the real time thing would be fantastic...I do realize it'd be a great deal of work, but hey, if you are offering, sounds like a wonderful thing!

As for the "international" problem, I find myself on at all times and therefore wouldn't find it to be a problem....I know when certain peeps are most likely to be on according to where they live so go on when I think they are there....!

No saves...ack....we hear the same thing over anyway and it'd be something different entirely, I think, anyway...

Let us know, as I'm sure you will, if we can aid in any way!

[Jungl3M4n]

I was some years ago moderating a chatroom in the undernet servers! #flash it was started by me with the nick (JLx) and a friend (So-Icths), we were there for long! I guess something like 2 years, and yes some times the ppl ask the same question, now the thing is 20 Ton maybe developing something loke a bot(eggdrop) that tells the ppl to go to some tutorial or someting.

We with help of a friend have a bot called Tween he (BOT) know the answer to almost 2000 questions, well it wasnt runned by me ant the owner never let me get the DB of q/a but that might work here as well.

Count with me, i can help there.

Greets,

[Alareth]

Speaking from the viewpoint of an IRC junkie that hangs out in an RPG channel: Yes, you do see the same questions over and over again.

But you get used to it. If the question is asked enough times we add it to the FAQ and refer people.

There are several questions I have that I've never been to get what I feel was an adequate answer to on forums that would most likely be solved quickly if I was actually talking to someone in real time.

Another plus is the fact that during the off hours chat can get hillariously funny.....

The other option for information transfer would be for all of you to put you heads up against the monitor and let me suck the info straight out of your brains using this prototype brain wave scanner I've cobbled together... And don't worry, the drooling and mumbling are just minor side effects that should wear off in a few years.

[Jesse]

The benefit of IRC is that we could make a bot which answerred regular questions and it's already set up and free. Unless we wanted to make a Flash chat with some sort of bot. Sounds XMLish. Not me