Viewing Thread:
"VOTE HERE FOR CHAT (OR NOT)"

Should Special Reserve have a chat room?

Or not.

One "man" one vote.

State you arguments too.

(Several days have now elapsed)

Here is the result of the Vote:

These guys voted NO:
Ant
Fishstick
Darkness
Bronzefinger
Sniper
Goatboy
Webmaster
M16
Terry

These guys voted or interpreted as YES:
Reaper
er-no
The Game
Monkey
Laurence
pb
Venom
Lewq
Morrigan
Time Warp
Grix

These guys are on the FENCE:
Batistuta
Tony
Tarrant
Sheepy
Edgy - who doesn't really care cos he doesn't use chatrooms much at all....

i use irc (chat) predominantly, and although i find the forum great fun, it's very painful for short one-liner chat and things like setting up online games. otoh, for long discussions and more complex conversations, i find the forum very helpful as you have time to look back over what you've written and you aren't under so much pressure to hit enter.

i can only see a special reserve -specific irc channel (/ chat room / whatever you wish to call it) as something that would work side-by-side with the forum concept, it will also be more inviting to new users, and the conversation can be much more interesting as it is all "real-time" rather than having to hit refresh every two minutes.

basically, i'm for it. i've experienced centralchat (the network i believe phil is proposing to host the room) and it is very friendly, well staffed and under control. i'm sure they'd all make you very welcome there. of course, you don't have to use it, and if you're a hard-core forum user i'm pretty sure it wouldn't affect your way of life (if you were to choose not to use it).

go phil :P

-lewq

Sniper wrote:
> 'NOT' worth it.

People who tried it liked it, people who didn't aren't giving it a chance. Some people simply wont use chatrooms, but there will clearly be more than enough to make it worthwile.

I vote it stays.

It doesn't necesarilly (I'm still not quite sure how to spell that.. )detract from the forum, becasue there are things you can do in a forum that you just can't do in a chatroom - the stories, the topics requiring serious thought - in other words, all the things that make FOG what it is will remain largely unaffected.

It's nice to be able to talk live with people here occasionally. It's also the only known chat room on the net I've successfully accessed, and it's very user friendly.

Hassle? Well, we at CentralChat will help take as much hassle away as you like, we want this to be a success, and will do as much as we are asked to do, to help. It should not be a hassle for SR to set up at all.

'NOT' worth it.

I don't think it's really worth all the hastle.

I like these forums and the fact you can look at the historical (and sometimes hysterical) posts. There's no substitute for that.

If someone wants to set up a semi-affiliated chat room, then that's fine, but wouldn't it be a lot of effort for SR to go to when they already have these forums?

Seems that the people who've actually come and tried it out have voted yes, but those who haven't tried it are saying no straight away..

shame if it doesn't happen, because the chatroom Phil set up has been very busy over the last few hours.

As for losing the conversation - all you have to do is download any IRC client (e.g. mIRC for Windows) and then you can log all chats and have a permanent record of them, admittedly it's not the same as a forum but chatrooms compliment forums and never ever make a dent in forums popularity.

You have nothing to lose by going for it, and if anyone at SR has any questions for me then email me at [email protected] (I will also give you my phone number via email if you want to discuss anything).

The chat applet is very reliable, our most popular page currently gets 900-1600 visitors per day and we get very few tech support questions considering the number of users.

I think that chat should stay.

We all talk on MSN anyway, so why not all chat in one big room?

ok Tony, sorry! no need to panic. I want to see what happens.