A real-time chat applet would be an awesome addition to this forum. What do you girls and guys think?

interesting idear but we are all on different sides of the world and i would miss out because i always seem to get on when no ones around

Chat is nice and has it 's places. One of the forums I used to frequent had one. (It now seems to be defunct). Trouble was, no one used it. Or I should say they rarely used it.

IMHO, that is a lot of expense to add a chat and pay the royalties and the problems that come with it. Maybe I am wrong but I would think that a chat applet won't come for free...

free chat for your web pages (http://freewarejava.com/applets/chat.shtml)

One thing with chat is there'd be no way to authenticate users. Anyone could log in as "pine_nut" and start spreading some horrific stories.

Also, even though those applets are free, you'd still need a dedicated IRC server. And, as wet1 notes, it's not obvious that anyone would use it.

Porfiry
One thing with chat is there'd be no way to authenticate users. Anyone could log in as "pine_nut" and start spreading some horrific storiesThe first thing that came to mind for me was that we can cuss each other out in real-time. Not the best idea in the world. However, after I dropped my MSN and AIM handles into my profile, something struck me as a possibility.

I have, recently, been tearing up a forum for a developing video game for various reasons, and while it pains me to even offer their url at this time--they have decided, among other things, to screw Mac users due to legal details--I did notice something worth suggesting.

The video game is Tactical Ops, and their forums (http://forums.tactical-ops.to/) are currently vBulletin 2.2.0.

At the end of each post, where common buttons (profile, buddy, &c.) appear, there also appears a little symbol for any chat/messenger service the user has included in his/her profile. Just click on the little symbol, and your messenger launches and so forth ... Just for an example (http://forums.tactical-ops.to/showthread.php?threadid=21909) is this thread on releasing the game for Macs.

Dunno. It occurred to me that this would give people the option of, say, cussing each other out in real-time if they've bothered to launch AIM or MSN, and furthermore would save you the effort and expense of IRC server space. Is there a royalty for the display of the little AIM guy or the MSN busts and so forth?

Harassment liability? How sticky is that, or would/does the TOA cover that?

Anyway, just a thought that crossed my mind. As it is, it doesn't seem too troublesome to open someone's user profile to check if they have AIM or MSN or such, but everybody loves click-reduction.

thanx much,
Tiassa :cool:

1
Posts would degenerate into one liners. More complex ideas could never get airtime.

2
No archive of discussions past. The same ol' stuff would get repeated endlessly because there's no "forum memory".

3
Noob unfriendly. They get no background on existing state of the forum if most of the "talk" is conducted in chats.

4
Existing user unfriendly! User is browsing froum wondering why there's no action, while ppl are in a chat somewhere ...

5 - 10
KB, T1, TS, ISDAman, etc. (5 reasons right there)

I don't undestand your last point\s

The rest i agree with
the way it is no one has to be on t the same time to talk and decuss

Originally posted by G0D
5 - 10
KB, T1, TS, ISDAman, etc. (5 reasons right there)'Nuff said. Against.

Peace.

My what weight 5-10 carry.

All it would take would be one on each channel and chat is highjacked. Subject limited.

I must be stupid because i don't know WHO THE HELL YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT

Spend a little time in the religion threads, all will become clear with one exception...

While I think G0D has an excellent point against installing chat in the form of the original suggestion, is there some problem that prevents us from ignoring those chatters?

I stand by my earlier post in this topic. Entirely. However, I could care less since I rarely use my AIM or MSN. I'd be willing to if I thought anyone ever would want or need something of me that directly. But making a Sciforums IRC channel would be a bad idea across the board, for the reasons expressed by Porfiry and Wet1, as well as the enumeration of our problematic posters provided by G0D.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

In a way, we already have chat available - in the "private message" function. Granted that the "chat" is not within one window and it is strictly between 2 ppl at a time, but it is in real time. A window pops up whenever you recieve a PM, or whenever you login.

Another way of contacting individual forum members is simple email - provided the member has the function enabled.

I've nothing against a chat service icon, esp if it brings in revenue for porfiry. But IMO there's no advantage in a service created especially for sciforums.

I would like to have real-time conversations with several sciforums users. Just make it clear that if anyone gets you angry or whatever, you Ignore them; bad behaviour gets a temporary ban. Scripts for monitoring nasty language aren't difficult. As for the registered users/false users thing, I don't see the problem there either. Using IRC for example, you can have channels Invite only, or have them so Keys are required. Keys might be a combination of login and password for example, or channel keys might be emailed out to all sciforums users.

Why don't we have a vote to try the chat out for a month or two and if it doesn't work out we vote again to have it taken away. This way everyone's happy, right?

Groovy. :)

I seem to be missing a vital portion of this debate. So please, help me out with this ....

• Also, even though those applets are free, you'd still need a dedicated IRC server. And, as wet1 notes, it's not obvious that anyone would use it. (Porfiry)

• . . . . I could care less since I rarely use my AIM or MSN. I'd be willing to if I thought anyone ever would want or need something of me that directly. (Tiassa)

• I would like to have real-time conversations with several sciforums users (Adam)

• Why don't we have a vote to try the chat out for a month or two and if it doesn't work out we vote again to have it taken away. This way everyone's happy, right? (Pollux V)

So first, a question for Porfiry: As I recall, you don't own your servers. How much would a dedicated IRC server cost you?

In the spirit of Pollux V's suggestion, I'll start leaving my AIM and MSN Messenger open. Given that I picked them up to replace telephone commuication with a technophile friend of mine, I hardly ever use them unless something's afoot that requires my immediate involvement. RIght now, they're wasting disk space, but sure, I'll leave 'em open. The handle for either of them is BaronSzurke.

As Adam has noted, real-time conversations might serve some purpose beyond the real-time cussing that I've joked about. (I've included Adam's comment also as counterpoint to the notion that nobody would use chat, but it is worth noting that, unless my count is wrong, as of this post, 9 out of Sciforums' 4,568 registered users have sounded off to mixed results.)

After a couple of months, I'm quite sure that we can have an answer as to whether the idea of Sciforums real-time is worth it or not. Who knows? Maybe Adam and I can discover new perspectives, maybe we'll just sit up getting drunk bashing at each other ;)

Heck, there's a Yahoo! Messenger, too, if you really really hate MS or AOL. And, to top it off, if the chat idea takes off, Mac users at least have the option of downloading Fire for multiservice chat. (Don't know about Win users, never bothered to look.)

But it seems to me quite simple to test the chat experience without asking Dave to either dedicate part of his existing resources to IRC or to pick up another server to accommodate the new service. When Dave figures out how to charge us money for this website, I'd be more inclined to let the IRC demand go without comment, but I do think at present we have a way to experience the real-time aspect without having to chainsaw the greater Sciforums body.

Incidentally, I hopped over to the TacOps forum, where I saw the chat buttons, and checked out a detail I forgot before; they're javascript buttons like the smilies on the new post page. Unfortunately, the utter in-the-hole condition of my ISP (AT&T Broadband), who would rather I believe that every major website from Microsoft to Apple to CNN just happens to have their servers offline at the same time, is making it a little difficult to research the possibilities within AIM, MSN, or Yahoo. But, as of this minute, I do apparently have service, and both my MSN-m and AIM are running.

I need to check in on the baseball game, though; the ground crew in Oakland was pulling the tarps a few minutes ago after a rain delay ... no guarantee that the game is going to go on, but I may or may not be at my desk after a few.

The messengers are small downloads, and I don't expect them to sack your performance too much. Even running OSX on a G3/400, I can still get away with running my usual complement of applications in addition to MSNm and AIM.

I would suggest this method of real-time interaction before asking Dave to start overhauling Sciforums to accommodate it. Of course, if Dave finds it a challenge worth undertaking, I won't object. But in the meantime, maybe I'm missing something ...

Is there a specific objection to using other means of chat than IRC? I'm wondering, then, why bother to record MSNm and AIM handles in the member profiles?

thanx much,
Tiassa :cool:

Ah, sorry, I thought Porfiry owned the server.

tiassa, as usual, brings good points to the thread.

While it may seem that I am against having a chat for the sake of chatting, that is not the thoughts I have. I realise that the members here are trying to improve sciforums. I do question the value vs cost. In that since we are not paying the bills here and that is what needs to be looked at.

You are asking Porfiry to foot the bill for what you wish. Remember the spell checker thread in this forum? Be real folks. If it was your money going out every month would you? There arlready exists those places to chat. All you need do is communicate that you wish to chat and where. That doesn't cost anything. All you need to do is leave your chat service running in the background, as tiassa has mentioned, and you have chat.

What bills exactly? You can get free software for everything. It depends on the server arrangement of course.

Well then if it costs money we should all just use one messenger thingy. At the moment all I have is msn, and if anyone wants to add me my email address is shrike116@hotmail.com and my username is Caballero Guapo. We have to start a list here of msn profiles or yahoo profiles or whatever and schedule time(s) for chatting.

I prerfer ICQ (because you can send stuff even if the person isn't online) but at the moment i have to use MSN because my computers broken

If anyone (not that i think anyone would want to talk to me) wants to talk i put it on my profile

go ahead

You've been added, asguard.

To what MSN or ICQ?

Hang on
was that you?

someone sent me something on MSN and i was wondering who it was

cool

Seriously, it will help and make sciforums.com a lot better. Sure you can fake other people's names, but mostly everyone on sciforums.com are intelligent and well-reserved people. Plus the style in which they speak, etc. etc. If whoever is suspicious ask them to post somewhere on the forum confirming. "I am *blank* in the chatroom right now"

*chants* CHAT ROOM, CHAT ROOM, CHAT ROOM!! :D

Porfiry, don't be lazy!! :D The best you can do is try it out, if it doesn't flow, then you may get rid of it. Trying never hurts.

Peace

As for MSN, add Pimpstaz_love@hotmail.com - whoever wants to go ahead.

I have two other e-mail accounts but they are maxed out at 150 contacts :D It would be great if I we could share what we all know. ;)

Originally posted by wet1
tiassa, as usual, brings good points to the thread.

While it may seem that I am against having a chat for the sake of chatting, that is not the thoughts I have. I realise that the members here are trying to improve sciforums. I do question the value vs cost. In that since we are not paying the bills here and that is what needs to be looked at.

You are asking Porfiry to foot the bill for what you wish. Remember the spell checker thread in this forum? Be real folks. If it was your money going out every month would you? There arlready exists those places to chat. All you need do is communicate that you wish to chat and where. That doesn't cost anything. All you need to do is leave your chat service running in the background, as tiassa has mentioned, and you have chat.

I see, but simplicity is a good thing. All you have to do is "click" to go chat, enter your username and instantly you have chat.

I don't use MIRC, ICQ, because I have MSN, Yahoo, AIM, so it's confusing.

Trillian helps but it has flaws. Also MIRC is addictive, so I don't want to go there :D

We should try it at least.

If this threead is still "relevant" :p

To me, the chatroom seems an unnecessary necessity :p cos if anyone wants to chat real time there are loads of other ways to do it (IM: MSN/ICQ etc and pm-ing, email etc)I can't see any reason why it would be better than MSN or whatever, and as someone said, anyone could come on under someone else's name (though the main users could register, I guess) and start flaming ro whatever (nioce that people would wanna do that :rolleyes: :( ) Seems the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

Originally posted by Firefly
If this threead is still "relevant" :p

To me, the chatroom seems an unnecessary necessity :p cos if anyone wants to chat real time there are loads of other ways to do it (IM: MSN/ICQ etc and pm-ing, email etc)I can't see any reason why it would be better than MSN or whatever, and as someone said, anyone could come on under someone else's name (though the main users could register, I guess) and start flaming ro whatever (nioce that people would wanna do that :rolleyes: :( ) Seems the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.

Porfiry can get a chat program that requires forum member registration, you enter your forum name and pass then you may chat.

I see no harm in trying it out. If it doesn't work, get rid of it, if it does, keep! :)

I've decided that chat doesn't really matter anymore. It'd be nice to have it, but the chat would take away the quality of the posts on the forums. So for now I usually chat with Asguard and Avatar about topics that generally don't relate to the forums. If the chat was here the forums might be the only topic we focused on.

I don't want this to be classed as cross posting since it isn't,
But I went ahead and set up a Sciforums chatroom courtesy of Parachat

<form>
<input type="image" src="http://freepop.parachat.com/images/pc_button_logo.gif" border="0" onClick="window.open('http://freepop.parachat.com/freepop/freechathost.html?room=sciforums', 'parachat', 'width=600,height=490,location=no,menubar=no')" >
</form>

So no more whining about a chat room, you got one ;)