Okay, it’s not like I don’t already spend too much time checking this board, but I was just thinking it’d be slick to have a chat room here.
My other geek obsession board, Miata.net, runs some kind of Java thing that works pretty well. There’s never a huge crowd, but it’s fun to drop into chat at weird hours when you need a break from a late-night writing marathon.
Any chance of a QT3 chat board?
Where’s the option for “Only if it was not video chat with nude Murph/Wumpus mudwrestling”?
I have no idea how to make a chat room. Tom?
Yea…
I wanna see the nude wrestling between murph and wumpus.
:oops:
I was thinking more along the lines of a QT3 channel on Battle.net. Anyone up for a game of WC3? I get off work tonight at 6:00p.m. (pacific time). The question is: Should it be the East Coast or West Coast server?
Email me if you’re interested, or leave a post.
The android with the Mind of George Bush leading his courageous desert stormtroopers into combat against the forces of Tenoch, last of the Aztec wizards. The resulting battle ended when the Plasma Baby was split into 5 distinct beings. The Android was buried in the fallout, but returned to help Rikki Puccio and the American military-industrial complex resist the invasion of the planet by an ancient antedluvian enemy.
I would vote for an IRC channel on irc.enterthegame.com. I know an op there and he can set it up and it is easy to use. Plus I idle there all the time as it is. I would definitely be around. If it is something other than irc I don’t know how much I would use it.
– Xaroc
Well, IRC nowadays requires you to figure out which net (DALnet, yadda yadda) you’re on, install MIRC, yadda yadda again. It’s not something you’re going to get the casual QT3 user to go through. (I used to be a heavy IRC user years ago, but pretty much gave it up about five or six years ago.)
I’ve seen a number of boards that have Java (or is it JavaScript?) chat rooms installed. And I think some of those actually point to an IRC chatroom; the Java thingy is just a web-based front end directly from site.
See how Miata.net does it… This page is just the “chat” link off their front page. Gives both a nice friendly chat page, as well as one that can be reached by the IRC crowd.
http://miatachat.tigerden.dynip.com/
For this to get a lot of use here, something like this would work best, I think.
I’d probalby stop in once in a while, but I would hope it wouldn’t detract from posts appearing on the boards. I probably wouldn’t have enough time to participate every night.
the last couple online web-based chat things I used actually hooked into an IRC chat room. XGR has one that works that way, I believe.
You wouldn’t know it by using it, but it’s IRC on the back end, and if you’ve got an IRC client and want to use it, you can pop into the chat that way too.
I don’t have the foggiest clue how to set it up, but there’s got to be a “web chat for dummies” website or something around. :)
I’d dig QT3 chat, though. It would be fun to pop in late at night when I’m bored.
Mark, if you want it let me know. We do it on POE. I always tend to be terrified of people who spend all day on chat. But occasionally I will pop in and when the forums are hot and there will be some interesting things.
Our chat uses a small public irc server so you can actually reserve a fair number of names (not all are taken) and you can use the little java thing or mirc or whatever. It would take all of 30 seconds to setup.
Having said that - I think it is a bad idea. Chat is nonsensical words in real time where you end up discussing the mundane and 99% of the activity is not well thought out. On forums, people can think before they post, look at it, edit it and then of course, always be remembered in time for others to rip apart. If chat stopped one thread from starting, it would be bad.
Chet
Actually, I don’t think a chat room will kill any threads. As you say, chat seems to be a place where you discuss the mundane… “God, I had a cruddy day. How are you?” “The coolest thing happened in Warcraft III today…” “Hey, I came in to my office this morning and my 18-month old was playing Kingpin. Should I be proud or aghast?” It’s a different kind of conversation.
If anything, it might inspire new threads… I just don’t see forums and chat as competitive.
I’d say go for it. It feels like there’s more drivel getting put up on this board anyway. Maybe people will divert some if it to chat, especially since most threads end up turning into a two person pissing contest in chat form.
Is it just me, or has there been a large influx of new people recently? It seems that at the start of the new board most people used their real names but now there’s pseudonyms everywhere. I’m just waiting for the l33t nicks to make an appearance. Thank god people aren’t attaching images as sigs…yet.
Man, the older I get, the more I start to sound like like Old Salt. I gotta take this shit less seriously.
I agree. People spend most of their time on chat waiting for someone else to say something. Makes for a rather pointless exercise. Besides I don’t have time for chat - it would eat into my online IL2 flying time.
Of course, all that assumes that:
a) people don’t WANT to discuss the mundane.
b) people actually did “think before they post.”
I wouldn’t mind popping into chat to discuss the mundane with the benefit of real-time. And I’d happily sacrifice several forum posts about the mundane to do it.
I think chat would actually generate forum threads, though. Someone would say “I was in chat and we were discussing blah blah blah, and so-and-so said this, what do you all think of it?”
And then there becomes a seperation of users, those who chat and those who don’t. Those that do will start making little in comments that if you were in chat would make sense, to everyone else they wouldn’t.
I have seen chat fragment a community before.
Right now, the way the site is segregated is much easier to deal with.
Wumpus <—> Everyone else.
Chet
That’s awfully sweet of you, Chet.
Look on the bright side, though. Maybe “Paul Jenkins” will get confused and post his stories in chat instead of on the boards.
If it’s a no-brainer to set up, why not try it and see if it has any adverse effects on the board?
Are you using Jpilot Chet? I think its the easiest to use for an interface like this. I was planning on using it on our site, but then we went and setup a #battlecruiser IRC channel on gamesnet instead.
Chet, if you don’t mind, go ahead and add a chat channel if it’s easy to do. I doubt I’ll use it much since I hate ICQ, but it would be a nice way for people to meet before playing an online game.