Slashdot Mirror
A Hybrid Between Chat and Message Boards?
qirtaiba asks: "Synchronous discussion software (in simple terms, chat) allows discussions to take place instantly and interactively, but asynchronous software (discussion boards, a la Slashdot) have the advantage that they allow people from different timezones to participate equally. Does anyone know of a hybrid? The closest thing I have found is a proprietary 'Commons Console' offered as a service by Conflict Lab. This is not just an idle question. The Internet Governance Forum (or IGF — you can find more information here) is meeting for the first time in Athens from October 30th to the 2nd of November, this year. A lot of people who might like to participate aren't going to be able to make it to Athens, so the IGF has asked for ideas on how best to enable remote participation. Can Slashdot help?"
I've been using Campfire as part of a group project. Initially I was against the idea.. but it's become useful, in that there's also logs of prior entries. About as close to a cross of chat and message board that's practical..
It's the rate of buildup. The primary advantage of chatting is that replies are fast enough that they can in turn be replied to quickly, therefor allowing a dialog to made quickly. It's ideal for the "well, what about this" kinds of conversations. Message boards have their primary advantage in thoroughness. When you answer, you try and create complete answers that are useful to everyone reading it and aren't as specific. You do bring up an interesting point though, and it makes me think that it'd be neat to see a wiki that had chat built in. A permenant documentation with quickness in discussion.
Well, half way there. Would a system to store the relevant parts of a chat session for future reference do?
I have freaks! I did something right...
Many communities seem to get a lot of mileage out of publishing their chat history (e.g. public IRC logs).
This doesn't really solve the problem of equal participation for peers separated by timezone (or, more to the point, separated by waking hours), but it does address the following killer feature of message boards: searching past discussions for help. Public message boards often serve as organically-growing FAQs; for every question asked and answered, hundreds may get answers without ever having to ask. The same is true of published chat transcripts.
(It works in the corporate setting too: I've personally had good success, in terms of capturing ephemeral knowledge that would otherwise be lost, with behind-the-firewall publication of internal IRC logs.)
One thing that I think is really cool in Slashdot's proposed new commenting system is the micro-update commenting where the page periodically and frequently pings the server to pull down a small amount of update data. This eliminates the need to do a full page refresh just to get new comments. It cuts down on Slashdot's server strain as well as clientside button-pressing.
When that becomes a reality I expect commenting to take off here like it hasn't before.
Instead of straining yourself to figure out how to merge a chatroom with a message board, I'd recommend simply streamlining whatever message board configuration you're using for the fastest post/refresh rate you can get. The faster a user can post and refresh, the more simultaneous user connections your message board will be able to handle at one time.
The ideal way of doing this, is to make it so the user can post and get immediate results within a single mouse-click. Messages should be displayed in a linear fashion using a single page, rather than broken up into pages or nested by reply. A good example of such a setup is theFark.com website. Users can respond as quickly, or as slowly, as they like.
Just remember, any system that makes a user wait too long or makes it difficult for the user to find information will almost always fail in the end.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Chat is basically a non-threaded forum, running in real-time (which is to say it has lag below a certain treshhold).
The real difference is non-threaded forums (e.g. Bulletin Boards) vs. theaded forums such as NNTP or the slashdot comments.
If slashdot were refreshed every tenth of a second, it would be a threaded chatbox.
Now there _is_ a difference in how people communicate over chat vs. forums; chat typically contains a single sentence in each "post", whereas forum posts typically contain multiple sentences and even paragraphs. I'm willing to bet this behaviour stems purely from the (percieved) difference in lag; if you had a chatbox where messages would take longer to appear, people would probably start writing longer messages.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I am now using Blursoft's Metaforum
It works like phpBB or vBulletin but the active threads page, inside the thread itself and various other places are all built around Ajax so you get the realtime, non-refresh mode.
If someone posts the thread is bumped and everyone knows. In fact if you use FFx and move the forum to a background tab the tab blinks when a new post is there so you can go on with other work and only look when something has happened.
It's still beta but it's now quite usable. Plus... it has Ajax'ed Slashdot style moderation. Members can increase a post above the noise or sink it to oblivion. You set your floor with a fuzzy slider.
There is a working forum at http://www.planetblur.org/beta/index.php if you want to look.
Orationem pulchram non habens, scribo ista linea in lingua Latina