Jump to content

Who would like a Chatroom?


Chaos

Recommended Posts

The member Sweetness in our forum cbox expressed interest in an IRC channel. Going off that idea, I was wondering how many people would be interested in a chat room? Invision Power Board (our site software) does have a chat module, and I hadn't installed it in February 2011 because I wasn't sure there'd be enough interest. However, we have a lot more activity now than we did back then. So, we definitely have the capability to integrate chat into the site, in either IRC form or not, but would this be something you would be interested in? With "you" meaning our many many lurkers as well :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm in favor of it, but the only issue is that it would need a moderator. Someone would have to be there at all times to keep the peace and handle trolls/spammers/whatever else comes in.

That was the other primary reason why I didn't want to do it (in addition to the potential lack of interest), because I knew I couldn't be up to the task. Of course, now we have a ludicrous abundance of staff members, so I'm not too worried that we can have moderators in there.

I'd be up for it. If it's IRC, i'm totally gonna just hop into it via trillian and have it open on my phone and home/work PC practically 24/7 :P

Well... that works :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, explain it to me like I've never used a computer before. :P How would this differ from the chatbox at the bottom of the forums? You could access it without going to the site? Would this chatroom require itss users to download anything? What are the benefits to having a chatroom?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, explain it to me like I've never used a computer before. :P How would this differ from the chatbox at the bottom of the forums? You could access it without going to the site? Would this chatroom require itss users to download anything? What are the benefits to having a chatroom?

This differs from the chatbox at the bottom in that it is completely real-time. Think about it like instant messaging, but with a group of people. Does that make sense? The cbox currently here is more like a general thread, where anyone can blab whatever. But you can't really carry on an extended conversation there. In a chatroom, you could.

With IRC (the chat protocol I will most definitely use), it's a very standard chatroom protocol. What that means is that any chat program can, in theory, plug into its functionality. So if you wanted to chat, you could 1. Go into our web interface. This will be surely how 95% of people will use this. 2. You can download an IRC client, or any IM program that has IRC functionality. I know Trillian can do this, and that's how I'll be using the chatroom, because all my IMs go through Trillian anyway. So you download a client, and then connect to a particular server and you're in.

The benefits to having a chat room would be a lot, really. Imagine on a day where we have a big contest, and tons of members are flooding the site. It's nice to have a chat channel that we can make the de facto Brandon Sanderson chatroom--which is why I'm leaning to naming the channel #cosmere over #17thShard. On those high traffic days, if lurkers just want to meet members on the site, they can just join the channel, and see if the site is something they are interested in joining. There's a lot of uses a live chatroom can have.

It will also be good for live Q&As about cosmere stuff. Obviously, it would be prohibitively challenging to do a cosmere Q&A in the cbox.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From what Chaos says, I think a chatroom sounds great! The chatbox at the bottom would still be there, correct? Because I love that thing. I think you're right about the cosmere Q&A's though. I'm sure on the days when Brandon mentions we're having a contest there are literally dozens of people who still have no idea all his works are related. It would be nice to have a place where they can all just ask whatever they want, and we can bring them up to speed relatively quickly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

For reference:

The chatroom is open, hosted on freenode.net, in the #cosmere channel.

To access it directly from a web browser, you can go to: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=cosmere

(Figured I'd post a response here, since this thread hasn't been updated with that information)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

All I have to say tonight is that I'm not one much for chat. While I'm not opposed to it, I'm just reserved.

Edit: I thought I should explain myself further.

I'm kind of afraid. Despite however much I want to contribute, I'm a very solitary person (and used to it). I do what I want to simply because of that and I'm reluctant to be challenged. Whew!

Okay, that was huge!

Edit: Maybe not so huge. Are there more women here though?

Edited by Tamzin Ashevai
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...