Chat

[AR Husker Fan]

I received the following PM from Landlord, below. As I recall, he's been asking for chat capabilities for quite some time. Zoogs has set up a chat system, but obviously Landlord is looking for something different. Perhaps it's just me, but I don't see the need; it might be a nice feature, but is it necessary? Would it draw more users or potential members? Is there a way to integrate another system, and more importantly, can we do it at no cost?

I took a look at kiwi and don't see an easy way to embed it with a red theme and default entrance into the chat room. I think it might be possible and maybe I'll eventually get around to taking a look (although, if you'd like to code up a demo page, I'd be happy to drop in the script!)

I also think IRC is a little too powerful for our needs. I don't know. It's pretty cool but we don't need something where people need to be taught to communicate with the nick server and register accounts, etc. Or maybe we do?

Feel free to copy this to Blackshirt, AR Husker Fan, and DaveH as well -- since Blackshirt operates the site, and AR & Dave are both more experienced than me. That way you get more eyes on your pitch, too, than Luddite old me

The tlk.io chat I just dropped in because it seemed really easy and low impact / low learning curve. We might find eventually that we need a more powerful tool anyway, or maybe just not keep it.

Thanks!

Here's my frustration with the tlk.io

I don't think it will ever be more than an afterthought. Even if you click on it for a full browser window, which I doubt people will do, it's still very small and too twitter-esque, which I'm sure they see as a plus, but for HB I don't. I can't imagine having an ongoing conversation during a game or event via twitter.

Did you ever join any of the game chatrooms I made over the last few years? They're a total blast. And people do not HAVE to worry about nickserv or registering or any of that if they don't want to - but they can, if they want to protect their username or whatever. It also gives live moderation/admin control, so anyone in charge has just as easy control as they would over the forums.

I'll see if I can throw up a demo page for you to test out and send this to the others as well.

AR: I don't know how to send messages to multiple people - can you forward this on?

 

[knapplc]

I kinda like the chat, but I don't think we should get too invested in it. The whole point of this message board is to have conversations here, right? Any chat we come up with will by its very nature take conversation off the board. I would imagine if we developed a chat feature and made it popular, we'd lose half the posts we have in each game thread. I'm not seeing this as anything more than a toy, not a long-term benefit to the board.

Landlord is the only person who's been adamantly pushing for a chat feature. He's really into it, but everyone else seems to view it as a neat little oddity, but not a necessary feature. We've had that thing on the board for more than a week and, aside from a few 'what's this' posts, it's largely gone unused.

zoogs & I talked about it a little bit, and while it's cool, the biggest problem is policing it. Near as I can tell, anyone can sign in under any user name, meaning I could log in to that chat as Eric the Red and say a bunch of nonsense. We have no way of policing it, so when Guy Chamberlin asked for the Woodshed password, anyone could have posted it there and we wouldn't have been able to remove it. Same goes for links to streaming video feeds of games, etc.

 

[Eric the Red]

I kinda like the chat, but I don't think we should get too invested in it. The whole point of this message board is to have conversations here, right? Any chat we come up with will by its very nature take conversation off the board. I would imagine if we developed a chat feature and made it popular, we'd lose half the posts we have in each game thread. I'm not seeing this as anything more than a toy, not a long-term benefit to the board.

Landlord is the only person who's been adamantly pushing for a chat feature. He's really into it, but everyone else seems to view it as a neat little oddity, but not a necessary feature. We've had that thing on the board for more than a week and, aside from a few 'what's this' posts, it's largely gone unused.

zoogs & I talked about it a little bit, and while it's cool, the biggest problem is policing it. Near as I can tell, anyone can sign in under any user name, meaning I could log in to that chat as Eric the Red and say a bunch of nonsense. We have no way of policing it, so when Guy Chamberlin asked for the Woodshed password, anyone could have posted it there and we wouldn't have been able to remove it. Same goes for links to streaming video feeds of games, etc.

Is that why it appears NuPolo8 is now logged back on. Is it really him.

 

[knapplc]

I don't think it's him. The first week it was up, someone logged in as ShawnWatson, Chaddyboxer and another banned member whose name escapes me. I don't think it was any of them - especially ShawnWatson, who would have posted some pretty salty things if he had access to this forum again, based off what he's been posting on Twitter.

But, there's nothing stopping any of them from logging on to that chat. All they'd need is someone to give them the URL, and they're back on this board.

 

[AR Husker Fan]

I'm convinced - that's reason enough for me to just drop it and go with the chat Alex set up.

 

[zoogs]

He's talking about the one I set up (although generally, it applies to any chat -- since they won't work with the board's IP ban lists or accounts.)

(An exception is probably the paid IP.Chat service)

 

[huskeraddict]

I think having a chat during non-Husker major events (i.e. NFL playoffs/Super Bowl, NCAA Tournament, CWS, etc.) is a good idea. Having it all the time is kind of overkill since this is a message board.