Reply To: Chat room?
Hey, JoAnn! A chat’s not a bad idea, though I’m not clear what precisely you mean by “in here” — in the forums (like on the sidebar or something) or for the forums (but hosted offsite)? If the latter, there is, as Mark says, an IRC channel that’s been set up — here‘s the thread about that. (It functions properly, but for various reasons it’s never gotten up and running — for one, it requires more software to run, and for another, because nobody hangs out there, nobody else goes there, which is to say if there were a crowd already, there’d be more reason for people to enter.)
If you mean “in the forums,” I really don’t know how hard that would be, to tell the truth. (Actually, to answer the question you asked, I know exactly how hard it would be for me — I’d have to figure out what software JoCo would have to install and e-mail him requesting he install it, then wait.*) It would depend largely, I think, on what kind of extensions have been written for the forum software (Vanilla) — here are a few possibilities, but I haven’t investigated in the slightest.
Do people think this is a good idea? I have no objections, but I probably wouldn’t be much active in a chat (witness my notable absence from the “word association” thread) — I don’t think quickly enough on my feet. Obviously it isn’t a question of one-or-the-other, but I much prefer the forum format to a chatroom [I like organization, and of course I have a lot more power this way 😉 (but seriously that’s true) ].
*(Speaking of the power I have…) To clear up a popular misconception, I have no server-side access to the forum — hence the title “User Administrator,” meaning, “Random guy who can edit posts”, not to be confused with a “sysadmin” (system[s] administrator), who would actually maintain the software, etc., itself. No one but JoCo has direct control over the forum database, software, extensions, and all that.
[Also, if this were a chat, I wouldn’t have been able to spend twenty minutes writing a post.]