Bringing a chat room to the site was a solid idea and activity seems to be picking up there. I don't think this Chatroll platform is cutting it though. The major complaints are:
Short Buffer - We can only scroll up a few lines. This is bad if a number of people are participating at the same time, or if chat isn't the only thing you are focused on.
No ability to create logs - Good information is being exchanged in the chat, and it would be better if members had the ability to go back to information they found useful.
No real mobile accessibility - The chat was just not made for mobile. You can load it through a mobile web browser, but its ugly and unwieldy
No alert when your username is mentioned - nice to know when someone is calling your name, no?
Direct Messaging in the chat is poorly implemented - Messages aren't persistent. You receive one, you click away, and its gone. Half the time you don't even realize that you got a DM, or you clicked away before actually reading it.
Let's get a chat platform that really allows a large number of users to chat effectively. Mobile access, useful private messaging, logging, alerts, these are critical features for a good chat platform. Mobile is especially critical for anybody here working for a broker/dealer that has probably blocked WSO.
IRC has been the most effective chat technology for 20 years. Logging, mobile access, alerts, private messages are ALL handled elegantly. Buffer is a client side decision. This would way better handle the volumes of people the chat is starting to attract. Not to mention, IRC lets you delegate moderation of the chat to deal with blatant trolls.
Chatroll is costing you somewhere between $100 and $230/year, right? You could cobble together an IRC solution for free, or pay up for something easier:
http://www.officeirc.com/ - $500 license, so 2 years to break even with Chatroll?
http://www.webmaster.com/cr.htm - $250 license, so 1 year to break even.
If I'm the only one who thinks the chat could use some improvements so be it, but I'd be happy to put some time into hashing together a better option if there is support for it.
i like the way you think
Awesome suggestions but also necessary.
I'd support an enhanced chatting platform. Based on the commentary received last night, a lot of users are not aware of the chat room. I think we should find a way to promote it as we had up to 37 users once word got around.
Also, FYI -- Chat appears to be broken at the moment. Difficulty loading and once it loads it doesn't appear to permit me to send messages.
I'm new to WSO chat (less than a day). It seems like a good idea, but I agree with a few of the suggestions in the first post.
If I could get this on my blackberry, i can see myself using it a lot.
The chats broken for me right now.
vfrex, I agree with you completely. IRC would be great. We could access it with our own clients, and have all the functionality you mentioned.
I agree. The chat is a very useful tool to provide instant feedback and information as well as a place to congregate with somewhat like-minded people while bored at 1am.
ok.
I agree with this, especially regarding the DM system.
I know one of the things Pat wanted was a chat that interacts with the Drupal system, and IRC doesn't allow for that. The biggest issue with IRC is you're going to have trolls taking people's forum names, using similar names, stuff like that. Yes, you can register nicknames with the server, but if an active forum poster never gets on the server, or just never registers their nick, someone can just hop on and spew a bunch of bullshit using that person's name. Just one issue, I'm sure there are others.
If the worst case scenario is that a mod needs to clean up a troll situation now and then, is that really worse than the issues with the current chat? There are IRCd that can authenticate against LDAP and Drupal obviously works with LDAP.
Require unregistered site visitors to register before accessing the web IRC client. Pass the Drupal username to the java or flash client and force the visitor to register the name. Block access to the server from unregistered chat visitors.
Trolls can be controlled for IMO.
find something that bypasses work firewall too
I remember the very first WSO chat room... there were not many guys that used it and it was terribly terribly buggy.
The current version my only real gripe is with the side chats not having a separate tab or something like that.
As far as having a log im against it. I dont want everything I say going on record and I think I speak the same for a lot of us.
I think I broke chat :(
why are there still problems getting in?
I mean, really, what's the benefit of this? If you want to have a private conversation, take it to gchat or skype or something. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just happy that Pat's giving us the opportunity to engage with each other in real time.
Shaddup.
This is what I'm getting:
Too many simultaneous requests! Please retry in a minute.
(We're adding capacity as quickly as possible)
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