Apparently discourse has a chat function…
- we should activate it
- naah, chat is annoying
- just use r/lightsabers
- start a new discord server
- I let my blade speak for me!
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In a perfect world I’d like something at least semi-standalone like how the Crucible is hosted (I have difficulty justifying Discord because of what it is), but the web interface is a bit of a letdown.
I’ve been going through different things like Matrix, Rocket, Zulip, and some others, and I dunno. They all seem promising but they’re all still built on web tech anyways and they’re not quite as fully fleshed out as Discord, so I’d be curious to see how Discourse handles it and if it’s any good. (Btw of the three Matrix seems the most polished for IM style things, but it seems to have some serious flaws with scalability and performance polish so it just seems it’s not a good solution anyways)
Would be nice to have both forum and IM interaction under the same umbrella, if it works well enough.
TL;DR: Try it and see?
I’m curious why you think it’d be annoying @profezzorn? Honestly my biggest annoyance with that sort of stuff is how it’s easily dragged off topic, but for real-time troubleshooting and things like that I find it a lot easier.
I’ve had a lot of “help me now” kind of stuff over the years, which is annoying.
Also, it’s nearly impossible to search chat and find anything useful, so all effort that goes into helping people on the chat is strictly 1:1 and doesn’t help anybody else.
If people would use it for things like “what forum should I post in?” or just jibber-jabber, that would be fine though…
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Ah, yeah that makes sense. I can see that as a downside. Especially since Google likes to index the forum pages.
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I like the idea of chat for goofing around, or quick questions. Although I could see questions getting lost, if it gets real active. Then the person could just start a thread I suppose.
tl;dr We already have a group, actually two, on one of the biggest social sites active for open discussion. While I do get the potential here you bring up, I feel having The Crucible in and of itself WITHOUT Chat is more than sufficient. If for nothing else than how often does chat elsewhere tend to eventually devolve into sophomoric nonsense, right? The same as far as a Discord. That alone is a whole other thing. You think moderating a social media group is busy, wait and see.
Keep The Crucible forum as it is. There’s a reason a lot of us like it as is. NO CHAT.
Damn I sound like a bbs luddite now.
The slow pace but interesting problems here are good for my mental health. So my fear: Chat has the potential to increase the expectation of people who need help and are anxious. Which will make me feel like I need to help and a faster clip, which will not be good for me. Plus the forum format allows me to make mistakes, and then be corrected and learn more.
But I’m willing to try. Jibber jabber can be fun 
The worst case scenario is the slow death of communication here and if chat helps keep The Crucible active that’s prob the most important thing. Maybe it can help.
So gut reaction: no. But the hopeful fool in me thinks yeah let’s go.
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As long as the chat isn’t in your face the whole time, and can be ignored, should be OK. Just not Discord. It’s the Devil’s work.
As long as I can disable and never have to look at it. I like to move text at my reading pace (which is slow) rather than having to follow and keep up with speeds set by who-ever(“s”) is(“are”) typing.
Yeah I’ve thought about this more and for the community The Crucible targets, a live chat doesn’t really make much sense. Forum style posts encourage more meaningful discussion, as well as thoughtful composition, and the spammy nature of live chats is something I’d hate to see invade here.
I like the possibility of live chatting, but it unfortunately seems to just attract the wrong kind of interaction. Plus like profezzorn said, making things harder to search is a pretty big detriment.