Chat Rooms/Shout Box suggestion

[Dark Squall]

OK, I don't want to sound like an idiot but why can't we have Chat rooms in the forums or at least a SB?

The SB will help the newbies to meet the members of the forums and will be fun. The SB will make the members stuck more in the forums instead of goin to the MSN to talk. By that, they'll know what's happening around the forums. No offense but I always see lots of members in the forums but the ain't doing anything. Usually they talk on the MSN.

Please put my suggestion in your mind before you ban me or at least call me a d*ck head, idiot...etc. =D

Thanks in advance

[OceanEyes28]

One of the major reasons we've never had one is the fact that it's really hard to moderate. As it is, VMs are a little difficult and we don't know about most problems until they get reported. But at least they can be reported and deleted. With a shout box, we don't have much control over what gets put in there, and it would all be happening so fast that the staff would have to read through hundreds of little messages to make sure everyone was sticking to forum rules.

[Victoria]

Oceaneyes pretty much hit the nail on the head. This isn't the first time this issue has been brought up. And I'm pretty sure it wont' be the last. And the answer will always be the same... ^_^;

[T.G. Oskar]

I believe you yourself answered a bit of the question, with Aly solving the other part of it.

It's really hard to watch and moderate over real-time. On real time chats, problems usually escalate, and it requires some time to stop the situation, and then provide the appropriate punishment for the act. It would be pretty difficult to assign a proper scale of punishment that would apply to the forum as well as to the chats, and it would cause several bans in almost record time. Besides, it would be very, very difficult to just ADD the chat box at the structure of the forum without having it lag or killing the bandwidth.

So, aside from the VM system, we've settled to take chats to MSN (there WAS a chat before, outside of the forums of course, but eventually people realized they knew and had more access to MSN than to a particular chatroom, and IM systems allow for greater amounts of liberty so to say). IM chat tends not to be moderated, and tends not to be considered part of TFF (think of it as a reunion of friends from work or something, where rules aren't as enforced). Do consider that, because it's not an official part of TFF, it's not bound by its rules; we tend to be pretty random in there. The fact that very little (except good ideas ^_^) is dragged from there (sometimes some drama drags in as well XD) helps to have TFF clean and safe for work.

So, there's not much of a need for a chat given that there's one extra-officially. Besides, the Introductions forum is the best way to allow people to introduce to each other. It also serves for when someone has to, sadly, part for a while (I say part because some of us can't leave TFF; it has an addiction on its own that's difficult to explain)

Besides, why would we ban you? It's a good question... Mods here are actually pretty nice (you certainly haven't met either Toph or Aly on MSN, they are really, really nice AND random. So does all the contacts, actually)

[Rocky]

Kinda like the above responses here, though I know zero about coding and the like, I bet it would be quite difficult to implement for TFF. I know Facebook for example uses a type of real time chat with people that are on the site at the same time, but the thing is very buggy and most of the time messages don't even get sent to one another without mulitple attempts.

Not only that, but the chat would require moderation. It wouldn't be quite as fun as being random on MSN, plus people would be less inclined to follow the rules in the chat, since a lot of time people start convos for the sake of BSing and such.

If people would like to talk to one another on realtime, download MSN and use it, send out friend requests, and bam, you're in! If you need someone to add to get into convos and such, feel free to send me a PM, I always accept TFF people. (hell, the only reason I use MSN if for TFF, I have AIM for all of my RL friends, which is the reason I have both now, lol.)

But, if by some chance TFF got its own chat.... I would apply for mod! Oh, the day I get appointed to a mod position, that would be something.

[LocoColt04]

I went ahead and selected OceanEyes28's response as the best answer to your question.

The reason most of the members participate in AIM or MSN chat rooms is because they are unaffiliated with the forums and don't have to concern themselves with forum policies. TGO mentioned this as well. As such, anything which goes on in said rooms is in no way associated with the forum.

[Cloudx7xstrife]

There is something called chatango.
I used to be a forum mod for a couple of sites and have good experience with HTML and coding.

With chatango you can create a chatbox and give certain rights to the people you want to have them such as banning, deleting, admin, etc.

I recommend it if you are looking for a chatbox BUT i dont recommend it unless you have something more rewarding for posting because with it NO ONE will post again unless it is for reviews, help, or detailed questions.

I think this would be better on the network site.

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[chaosweapon]

I remember that we used to invite each other on MSN. Discussions were quite mature but only a few people used to participate. I don't know if these conversations still exist because I barely had any free time since I began my Engineering course.