Instant chat

[Rivertheotter]

Do we have instant chat on this forum? On the wiki I'm part of, we have it. If we don't, it would be cool to have. I call upon the mighty admins to make this a reality!!

[Jukka the Sling]

We don't have it. It's been brought up a long time ago (before I was a member), but I don't think it would work with the forum software, and the mods thought it was a bad idea.

[Skyblade]

We do have some threads here in The Cellars where we can talk to each other.

[James Gryphon]

The idea has come up before, as early as 2011. The technical side has never been much of a consideration; the staff all took for granted that if we really wanted it, it could be done. That said, there are some problems with the idea that led us against implementing it.

I'll quote most of my post from that discussion (with a few strategic edits to remove sensitive information) from that time so you can see some of the thought process that went into this.

I've considered it, but I'm honestly not sure if it is desirable, and I think there are problems with the practicality of such an idea.

From personal experience, I can attest that while chat rooms can be a nice place to shoot the breeze with acquaintances, they're also sometimes prone to junk -- things that aren't helpful for building our users' character. Even if it would be fine, some of our members are prohibited from doing so anyway by their parents or guardians.

Another thing is conflict resolution: Right now, some members react like fire and gasoline, and this is when their posts are hours, possibly days apart, and they have time to think about what they're going to respond with. Imagine how much worse it could be if all these arguments happened at one time, with the heat of the moment influencing their response even more than it does now.

We would have to leave someone on at all times to keep things under control. I don't think our moderation team is overtaxed at present, but adding in such a major responsibility would definitely make things trickier on us. I'm on more than anyone else on the forum, and could probably spend a lot of time monitoring a chat room, but that would have a way of wearing us down.

Finally, our users operate on different times and schedules, so it's entirely possible that most people wouldn't be able to meet up anyway.

It may be a useful feature for some boards, but I don't think it's the right thing for this community, or at least, that this is not the right time to consider adding it.

Re-edit: I might also add that in the long run, I don't think it is really helpful for building the information available to our community. Most chat rooms don't have substantial logs, so they don't give the community as a whole more information; they only benefit the select few that happened to be online at that time. If I post a response to something on "General Discussion", it can be read by anyone, but if someone makes some witty comment in a chat room, odds are very good it will be lost or forgotten shortly after it was made, thus benefitting no one.

[Rivertheotter]

thank you for your information!

[The Skarzs]

If one really wanted an "instant chat" that badly with other members, he/she might put together something like a Teamspeak or Skype chat for the members.