Should forums have a Chatroom?

[MisterBobbyPin]

Should forums have a chatroom? It does help connect members together, but it does lead to spam. What do you think?

 

[Uncrowned]

I don't believe in having a chatroom (or really most features) just to have it as a feature. If the site/forum can benefit from a chatroom or if it fits into the overall plan as a resource, then yes it should have it.

For example, out of all my sites, the only one that uses a chatroom feature is Uncrowned Gaming for its esports streaming page. A forum or similar does not work well for live stream chats, so it is a perk.

 

[Arantor]

I think it really, really depends on what the site is about.

Certainly it was an argument back in the day to have a chatbox or shoutbox or similar chat feature for people to hang out in between the bigger posts, but it tends to end up eating away at the general discussion/shoot the breeze boards, which can eat away at other activity.

It's certainly popular and prevalent over in the roleplay world for that exact thing, where you socialise and also have back and forth discussions about plots you want to write, and then use the forum for the actual writing.

But I'm not sure of the dynamics any more; in a time when forums already have to compete for attention harder than ever before, chat feels to me like a possibly slippery slope down to inactivity.

 

[Kale]

Not really IMO. It will just take away from the forum itself and then you'll see less people post on your forum. I am not against an occasional chatbox/shoutbox, but I've found back in the day arguments like the above. Some did argue that people would post in that over posting in the forums. It makes more sense for an RP/RPG forum to have a cbox/shoutbox or even a Discord server IMO.

I like Discord and all, but I'd never make one for Discussion Block for the reasons listed above by @Arantor

 

[Aaron]

I have allowed a chat room or shout box in the past but that's mostly for the staff and VIPs to chat privately as an extra goodie when they get higher status.

 

[Cory]

I have the shoutbox disabled on my forum, but I have a Discord server. I don't think it's necessary to keep it, but it is useful for keeping in contact with members at ease and one of the primary uses for it is to create a new message for every new resource posted on the board to keep users informed.

 

[Kale]

I actually linked my Discord that I made many years ago on my forum and no one joined. I ended up deleting the thread.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think a chat room may work if you use it only for scheduled events.

Like staff meetings or community chats on certain days, times, etc.

If you leave it up for everyone all the time, they might find it more convenient to use than the forum. Then you'll have this bulky inactive forum with a active chat room on top of it.

Chat messages go away and not everyone will see them

Forum messages stay put

The like button is almost just as bad. It is easier for me to react with a like than post something but we've used the like button so long that it would anger us to get it taken away. The same will go with a chat room. If you add it and people get used to it, and it kills your activity, it will be hard to take it away.

 

[Cedric]

I think a chat room may work if you use it only for scheduled events.

Like staff meetings or community chats on certain days, times, etc.

If you leave it up for everyone all the time, they might find it more convenient to use than the forum. Then you'll have this bulky inactive forum with a active chat room on top of it.

Chat messages go away and not everyone will see them

Forum messages stay put

The like button is almost just as bad. It is easier for me to react with a like than post something but we've used the like button so long that it would anger us to get it taken away. The same will go with a chat room. If you add it and people get used to it, and it kills your activity, it will be hard to take it away.

Taking away the like button might indeed anger people more. Instead it's better to work out the like system with more reactions. While a like button may seem to take away a post - I think said post wouldn't add much value anyway. A "+1" or "agree" is better to be converted as a like. Unless someone has something valuable to add, then they will post so. Pretty much the same as I'm doing - although valuable may seem a discussion.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Taking away the like button might indeed anger people more. Instead it's better to work out the like system with more reactions. While a like button may seem to take away a post - I think said post wouldn't add much value anyway. A "+1" or "agree" is better to be converted as a like. Unless someone has something valuable to add, then they will post so. Pretty much the same as I'm doing - although valuable may seem a discussion.

True.

At the end of the day, I'd much rather see a LIKE reaction than a one-liner that was quick and has no thought to it.

So, I think we can excuse the like system.

But a chat would really kill out a forum, especially if it got popular.

I'd imagine and maybe @Arantor can touch base on this, a chat would be a mega resource hog versus a forum if the chat becomes active on a daily basis. That could be another problem.

 

[Cedric]

True.

At the end of the day, I'd much rather see a LIKE reaction than a one-liner that was quick and has no thought to it.

So, I think we can excuse the like system.

But a chat would really kill out a forum, especially if it got popular.

I'd imagine and maybe @Arantor can touch base on this, a chat would be a mega resource hog versus a forum if the chat becomes active on a daily basis. That could be another problem.

Definitely agree with you there. The only time I see a chatroom/shoutbox work is for quick staff conversations on a super busy forum. Anything else, it draws away activity from the main forums and they end up with a bunch of spam anyway.

 

[Arantor]

a chat would be a mega resource hog versus a forum if the chat becomes active on a daily basis. That could be another problem.

Only if you're on a PHP-only environment where you're having to call the server every few seconds, for every user. It's better now because you can do things like open one call-home no matter how many tabs you have open (something you never used to be able to do) but realistically anyone going to do this could spin up something on Node or similar.

Unlike PHP which is 'send a request, get a response, close the connection', Node can let you open the connection and leave it idle, and push content to it, so you can scale a chat much better, but is out of the league of smaller hosting.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Definitely agree with you there. The only time I see a chatroom/shoutbox work is for quick staff conversations on a super busy forum. Anything else, it draws away activity from the main forums and they end up with a bunch of spam anyway.

I do think entertaining the idea of a monthly community chat would be interesting.

But only open it once a month and once a month only.

A great ways for everyone to meet each other.

You could do Zoom or Teams for premium members if everyone wanted to do something like that.

 

[Kale]

Laughs in Tufat Flash Chat at the resource hogging and such. I used that software many years ago on a forum I was a member of, then became a moderator of. That was such a bad chat software looking back, but it's a bit nostalgic.

Darren's Script Archive - chatrooms, image galleries, applets, advanced php/mysql systems

Flash chat room, online family tree builder, Flash DataGrid, phpMyAdmin, Content Management, Flash 2004, Image Gallery, phpBB, imagevuex, html2ps, html2pdf, PDF generation, Inspirational messages, AMFPHP

web.archive.org

It's dead now though.

 

[Dilip]

Definitely not in 2023. It will surely steal some posts daily. Plus, it is an old style of keeping the conversation going.

 

[Shortie]

I once had a chat room on a forum and I found that it took the activity away from my forum. Once I decided to scrap the chat room, activity increased on my forum again. Due to that I now do not have a chat room on my forum but that doesn't mean it will not work for everyone. Some people can have a chat room on a forum and still gain activity around the forum.

 

[Heatman]

As far as I'm concerned, chatroom or shootouts like some forums tag it is completely irrelevant to me. I don't see the essence of having it.

It's going to end up spilting the forum's discussion and a lot of trash talk can come in there if it's not managed properly.

 

[Mnikolic]

I just came across one of my old boards that dates back to 2011. I had a shoutbox there, but I always thought the forum layout and the whole design of the board looked better without it.

How Shoutboxes/Chatboxes can be useful it really depends on what the board is all about. I can see them be more pratcital for a RP-based community as the roleplayers can stay always up to date with their thoughts/plans when playing their RPs. But on a discussion board, I don't think the use of Shoutboxes/Chatboxes is practical or useful since all the discussions are going inside the forums/sub-forums anyway.

 

[Arantor]

I can see them be more pratcital for a RP-based community as the roleplayers can stay always up to date with their thoughts/plans when playing their RPs

Majority use Discord for this as a companion to the site rather than one hosted on the site in the old-fashioned cbox/shoutbox manner, but yes, it's very much the norm for that.

 

[Strawberry]

Laughs in Tufat Flash Chat at the resource hogging and such. I used that software many years ago on a forum I was a member of, then became a moderator of. That was such a bad chat software looking back, but it's a bit nostalgic.

Darren's Script Archive - chatrooms, image galleries, applets, advanced php/mysql systems

Flash chat room, online family tree builder, Flash DataGrid, phpMyAdmin, Content Management, Flash 2004, Image Gallery, phpBB, imagevuex, html2ps, html2pdf, PDF generation, Inspirational messages, AMFPHP

web.archive.org

It's dead now though.

I used to be part of a website that used Bribble as their chat software for the longest time and when they closed down, we moved over to Tufat. That is definitely taking me back!

Back to OP - I find that perhaps a shoutbox/chat would take a small amount of activity away - for example, the Social Lounge thread on here, if there was a chat, I'd most likely just post in there what I've got to say.