A chat feature has so many advantages I feel like quoting Thomas Huxley - "How stupid of me not to have thought of that." This may well aid in cutting down on some posts since people can 'thrash out' some of the smaller things and chat to admins without cluttering the boards.
Hurrah.
However, there is the dark side: moderation. Chat rooms breed drama like creation/evolution sites. A creation/evolution chat room has the strong potential to reach critical stress and explode. Chat rooms add an extra level of 'personalness' to these things, and plenty of people cannot cope well with that transition and can get very upset in real time chats whereas on the boards they may feel more psychologically able to go away and chill out for a while.
Suggestions:
1. Integrating user names on the board with the chat. Using something like
this authentication script
2. Perhaps try
ICE - the moderation on it is meant to be better...but I don't know if it's worth the extra cost.
3. Possibly get some chat room mods? I guess we need to wait to see if they are needed, but I suspect they will be, just to keep things civil.
4. A whole new set of rules would need to be made about what kind of content we should have in there, and how it intends to be used.
Anyway, it looks great right now - hope it gets utilized well. Thanks Percy.
™ Version 4.2
