Lack of interest In-Discussion Chat

[Sal Collaziano]

Picture this scenario... You have a forum set aside for posts that get reported. When the report is made you (the admin) and your moderators get a notification. You all end up at the discussion at the same time and are posting back and forth. Would it make sense to have the ability of having more of a chat room sense to a discussion like that where you're trying to decide on how to handle a situation in real time? You could also have an option where the chat discussion gets saved as if it were a regular forum discussion...

 

[cellarius]

I know the situation, but honestly I never had any issues with it being done by regular posting. I feel that this is something maybe better left to an addon, since it would mean to introduce complete new functionality (and not trivial at that) just for rather special team-internal usage.

 

[Sal Collaziano]

I know the situation, but honestly I never had any issues with it being done by regular posting. I feel that this is something maybe better left to an addon, since it would mean to introduce complete new functionality (and not trivial at that) just for rather special team-internal usage.

Good point. However... I wonder if some "Facebook types" would appreciate a "forum" with that functionality and if it could be used to more or less act as a forum for those with short attention spans. Perhaps there could be a "go live" function available to any discussion thread that would simply BE forum posting but appear more real-time and chat like for those who don't like "forums". In other words - I wonder if it could be a way to bridge people over to forums back from social networks...

 

[cellarius]

There's a long-standing suggestion for continous refresh for threads somewhere in the suggestion forum. That would be essentially that, wouldn't it?

 

[Grover]

Picture this scenario... You have a forum set aside for posts that get reported. When the report is made you (the admin) and your moderators get a notification. You all end up at the discussion at the same time and are posting back and forth. Would it make sense to have the ability of having more of a chat room sense to a discussion like that where you're trying to decide on how to handle a situation in real time? You could also have an option where the chat discussion gets saved as if it were a regular forum discussion...

What do you mean exactly? Why would an instant chat function be that different from what we have now? (Mind you, I did not use the report function on a production site yet, but I am trying out now the XF admin demo over here). It seems we can already post back and forth (as you said) easily in the comment fields of the report function, so how does an instant chat make that different?

Or does the following apply to that report comments screen as well:

Conversation is too slow. Ive done that here with developers.
Basically the conversation page doesnt refresh. I have to either keep refreshing the page, or keep checking upwards for a PC alert.
When I see the alert I still need to manually refresh the page.
If I'm reading another page - because I dont know if a reply is on the way .. the alert is often overlooked for a while.

Do you mean this why an instant chat would help?

Good point. However... I wonder if some "Facebook types" would appreciate a "forum" with that functionality and if it could be used to more or less act as a forum for those with short attention spans. Perhaps there could be a "go live" function available to any discussion thread that would simply BE forum posting but appear more real-time and chat like for those who don't like "forums". In other words - I wonder if it could be a way to bridge people over to forums back from social networks...

I better understand this point. Facebook Messenger for example has proven to be a life-safer for myself, friends and clients. But a fantastic service like that is connected with Facebook instead of my forum platform. I still see several benefits for our forum community (both regular members and admin team) to be able to instantly chat with each-other through a system that is integrated with the forum. Here is a 10-page suggestion discussion about that: Instant message with friends online
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[Sal Collaziano]

Chat is more instantaneous. No tabbing over to hit a submit button. No lifting your hand to click a mouse to submit. You hit enter, and your message is seen. This sounds insanely crazy but that's how lazy people are these days. They can't hit tab or a mouse button. So chat it is... And if we can keep that chat transcript and post it as a discussion - as messy as it may be - it'll be searchable, search engine indexable, and can continue to get input... Without all the "heavy lifting" of posting like we do in forums...