Chat Room

[dwhitley]

You know what would be nice... is a real live chat room.... Talking live is much better then havin to post come back, post come back... Just my 2 Cents...

[Charles L. Cotton]

I'm not opposed to a chat room addition, but I need to research the phpbb website for an approved mod. If I find one I'll test it on another board I have. It has very little traffic.

Chas.

[G.A. Heath]

Charles, Since you are considering a chat room may I make a suggestion? I would suggest registering a channel on an IRC network such as freenode and then setting up a java client on an html page here. This will avoid eating your bandwidth up, as well as keep upgrades to PHPbb simpler, and will allow people browsing the IRC server to find the channel and get interested in the site itself.

[dwhitley]

Charles
If bandwith is not a issue, I can have one of my programmers create a chat room on your server. I could actually even create on one of my servers and we link it in. I have several T-3's so its not a issue for me. D

[ErnieP]

Another suggestion. I'm an amateur radio operator, and we have scheduled Net Times, either weekly or daily. Obviously not everyone can make it at the same time, but for example if you would suggest an "informal" Chat time of say 8 p.m. every night, or every Monday night....or whatever time you might choose, it would at least give those of us who would like to participate a...."fixed target".... :) That might also push up the number of people who would elect to get involved. Otherwise, it will be just hit and miss as to who is on when you happen to be on. Obviously, with a chat room platform, those who are on at any time could try to get others online to respond notwithstanding a "suggested" chat time. JMHO

[dwhitley]

I would agree... I think maybe having topics around a given time and any other time would be free for all.. D

[ScubaSigGuy]

Sounds like a good idea, but it could be a nightmare to moderate.

[nitrogen]

I'd say don't bother with heavy moderating. Make it plain that it is not "10 year old daughter" friendly, and must be monitored by parents or guardians, unlike the website. A couple volunteers would help, but the realtime nature of chat requires 10x the effort to moderate than a web forum.

Or just don't do it at all. Chatrooms attract all kinds of morons. I don't know if the effort required to moderate it would be worth it, but that's just me.

I'd be glad to help if people decide it's something they want; I moderate two IRC channels currently on synirc, and have written and modified [err, not moderated. oops] software that can help avoid some of the worst offenses.

[dwhitley]

We can write code that blocks bad words and bumps the user off. Also they would have to be a member of this board too. There are a lot of things we can do to keep unwanteds out... I have programmers that can make just about anything.. D

[Purplehood]

I'd say don't bother with heavy moderating. Make it plain that it is not "10 year old daughter" friendly, and must be monitored by parents or guardians, unlike the website. A couple volunteers would help, but the realtime nature of chat requires 10x the effort to moderate than a web forum.

Or just don't do it at all. Chatrooms attract all kinds of morons. I don't know if the effort required to moderate it would be worth it, but that's just me.

I'd be glad to help if people decide it's something they want; I moderate two IRC channels currently on synirc, and have written and modified [err, not moderated. oops] software that can help avoid some of the worst offenses.

Is there any way to allow only posting members of this website to have access to the proposed chatroom? That way you don't have outside Trolls dropping in just to stir the waters...

[nitrogen]

I'd say don't bother with heavy moderating. Make it plain that it is not "10 year old daughter" friendly, and must be monitored by parents or guardians, unlike the website. A couple volunteers would help, but the realtime nature of chat requires 10x the effort to moderate than a web forum.

Or just don't do it at all. Chatrooms attract all kinds of morons. I don't know if the effort required to moderate it would be worth it, but that's just me.

I'd be glad to help if people decide it's something they want; I moderate two IRC channels currently on synirc, and have written and modified [err, not moderated. oops] software that can help avoid some of the worst offenses.

Is there any way to allow only posting members of this website to have access to the proposed chatroom? That way you don't have outside Trolls dropping in just to stir the waters...

Depends on how PHPBB handles authentication. I've seen lots of poorly-written chatroom apps for phpbb, and that's why i'd discourage them in favor of an IRC-based approach. Wether we start our own "network" (only on one server) or join an existing network both have their pros and cons.

You can automatically moderate a channel to filter bad words, and kick people that use specific key words and phrases, but I feel pretty strongly that if we DO do a chatroom that we make it clear that it cannot be made 10-year old daughter friendly, and that younger kids should NOT use it unless supervised. That would go no matter which chatroom solution is decided on.

[G.A. Heath]

With IRC you can setup an irc bot with chanop powers to kick/ban people who violate the language rules and that aspect of maintaining the channel becomes automated. In an extreme situation you can require that users get permission to speak from the chanop. here's a quick, off the top of my head, list of pros and cons for using an existing IRC network:

Pros:
None of your own bandwidth is used for the actual chat service.
Users can use their own IRC clients to connect.
Attract non-members who may become interested.
Most IRC networks have multiple linked servers so if one goes down users who are affected can simply reconnect to another server.
no need to maintain the network/server yourself.
IRC bots can kick and even ban users from the channel who violate language rules and perform other tasks.
Java chat clients are available that can allow users who want to connect but do not want to use their own software.
Chanops can lock the channel so that members must have a password to connect or lock it so that the channel is invite only.

Cons:
Attracts non-members who may be interested in causing trouble (that's part of online life and easily dealt with by using kick/bans).
Network and servers are not under your direct control.
IRC, like all chat options, has a bad reputation and can get nasty.
Statements that are made which violate the language rules will appear on screen until they scroll off or are closed out even after the user is kicked and/or banned from the channel.
Users can "PM" each other outside of your control thereby stalking/annoying/harassing each other.
Spam bots do happen, although established networks do work hard at identifying and banning such abusers.

[iratollah]

You could setup a Gabbly chat button that is only visible upon login. It could also show how many are logged into Gabbly. While this won't keep out interlopers, it is highly unlikely that outsiders would even try a Gabbly login. Of course, existing members could still troll a Gabbly chatroom as they could use any login they choose for their Gabbly handle.

We used Gabbly on a couple of other gun boards and it worked fine, was a lot of fun and members more or less self-policed with regard to keeping it mostly civil.

[Charles L. Cotton]

And I was thinking this was a simple, "the light's on or it's off" situation.

I'll find the mod for phpBB and let you experts tell me if it "safe" code or not. I like the fact that it utilizes the board's MySQL database, so only our members can use it. As for bandwidth, my business plan provides for 200GB monthly. That's far more than is used for TexasCHLforum and everything else I have on TexasShooting.com, but I have no idea how a chat room would impact the monthly bandwidth. Would the fact that I have Gzip enabled also help bandwidth usage on a chat mod?

Chas.

[nitrogen]

And I was thinking this was a simple, "the light's on or it's off" situation.

I'll find the mod for phpBB and let you experts tell me if it "safe" code or not. I like the fact that it utilizes the board's MySQL database, so only our members can use it. As for bandwidth, my business plan provides for 200GB monthly. That's far more than is used for TexasCHLforum and everything else I have on TexasShooting.com, but I have no idea how a chat room would impact the monthly bandwidth. Would the fact that I have Gzip enabled also help bandwidth usage on a chat mod?

Chas.

I don't know this software that much, but if all that's being passed back and fourth is text, it wouldn't add significantly unless you were also passing multimedia back and fourth, and the board suddenly grew about 200x.

Again, not being familliar with the software, I wouldn't think gzip would make a difference in bandwidth. It'd make a difference with disk space though.