Do or do not?

[Deleted member 17779]

Do you use a shoutbox or chatbox on your forum? Why or why not?

I do have one on my forum but it can only be seen by the staff. Regular members aren't allowed to see or post in it. I chose this for 2 reasons. 1) I didn't want anything to take away from the discussions going on on the forum and 2) I wanted a way to be able to communicate with my staff members on simple matters that didn't necessarily require posting.

 

[Thomasss]

Nope, just gives another area for people to talk instead of posting, and if you have enough members to make it active, just add's another spot to moderate, and let's be honest, not many people like moderating, let alone a chatbox. 😛

 

[Deleted member 17779]

Nope, just gives another area for people to talk instead of posting, and if you have enough members to make it active, just add's another spot to moderate, and let's be honest, not many people like moderating, let alone a chatbox. 😛

True. Have you ever thought of letting your staff use one? Or are you fine without it?

 

[Thomasss]

Nope, just gives another area for people to talk instead of posting, and if you have enough members to make it active, just add's another spot to moderate, and let's be honest, not many people like moderating, let alone a chatbox. 😛

True. Have you ever thought of letting your staff use one? Or are you fine without it?

They all have Skype and each other's phone numbers, a chatbox would be almost useless for them. :lol:

 

[MeganChan]

I have one, though its rarely used.

 

[Cierra]

I use to have a chat room (123 Chat). It wasn't used much or was abused so it was removed a while ago. If there was a demand for it again when the forum was much bigger I may reconsider it.

 

[VirusZero]

We have a chatbox on our site and we use it mostly for when we want to discuss ideas that don't necessarily need a topic due to rapid fire nature or it just being general chat. Additionally we use it to set up gaming events, like if I see another member on and ask them if they want to play some Smash Bros or something. (Saves us from having to open skype to see if anyone's online. Which skype sometimes can't figure out... especially if people use skype on their phones.)

I would imagine if we had no chatbox we could have a higher post count had we used the forum for those chats, but honestly I'd rather have a lower post count but posts that are more meaningful than a line of "hey, how's it going" then "not bad and you?"

 

[Nebulous]

Do you use a shoutbox or chatbox on your forum? Why or why not?

Yes, because the members wanted it and they seem to like it being there. Oddly enough, the forum still gets plenty of daily posts. Apparently the theory that having a shoutbox will kill your forums activity is invalid. 😛

 

[Mikaya]

Yes, there is one. Guests can't see it, though. It's actually used quite often, and useful when you want to get a quick answer to a question you might have. New members sometimes pop in and receive a warm welcome. It's easy to make new friends and burn some time when you need to.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

Technically I dislike shoutboxes, but if there was a legit reason for me to use it, I would probably have one.

 

[Cosmic]

I've never been a fan of chat boxes, although I also don't believe the myth that they destroy activity. Just not a fan of them I guess. 😛

 

[MrDawn]

Technically I dislike shoutboxes, but if there was a legit reason for me to use it, I would probably have one.

I agree.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I did have one set up on my Steven Universe fan forum, but after converting over to phpBB I haven't really been bothered to install another one. Not too many people used the previous shout box anyways, so I just decided to leave the idea alone. Plus once before when I had a shout box installed on another forum, people tend to use that more than posting on the forums. :S