Cbox

[Saphira Siparti of Elvinoire]

maybe not FUN exactly. I mean, they are, but they can be solely for the prupose of saying thins like, "who wan'z to rp," or "____I've rped to your post in____" etc.
Much more convenient.

[Protégé]

Okay, so let me get this straight. A chat box can allow people to talk to each other, can be set up to block guests, is not private, and makes life two clicks easier. Whereas PMs do not require any work to set up, can be used to talk to another person, is not usable by guests, is private if people are planning something or the post, at the expense of a 2 more mouse clicks. Oh the horror of an action that does not take a full second. Also, a chat box might make the color scheme look weird, but I don't know what that could cause. Maybe small eye irritation. I don't know, I have always had trouble wherever I set up a chat box.

[Mike Meyer]

I agree with Protoge dude.

[raven]

Hmm, either way, it would make life easier I think.

[Protégé]

Okay, let's go along with that train of thought. Putting in a chatbox is like anything an admin would have to do for a site: it requires work. Let's say that the admin can only do X amount of work in a day. Now, what would be work, and how could it benifit members:

Put In Chatbox: See my other post
Put in New Board: Gives members more room for creativity
Put in New Positions: Some members will be happier, increase creativity in characters (some use it as a crutch, remember)
Create a Tournament: Allow people to move up in position
Admin RPs: Admin can see errors or problems, help others, relax and enjoy himself instead of straining himself to do everything.

I'll leave you to think about which one is best.

[Saphira Siparti of Elvinoire]

Hey.
look here. It requires work....sure.
VERY SMALL AMOUNT. and I'm really talking, really really really really small.
you sign up for cbox. Activate account.
(totall about 3 minutes? hmmm...alot of work...)
Then they give you the code for your cbox. With instructions and verything, customation stuff etc etc etc. You past code in global footer. Done.
Oh yea, and if you want to put another cbox up elsewhere…guess what? You can use the same code.
And if that tires you out too much, then guess what? You don’t customize it-the colours are still normal and I somehow don’t think it would mess up the screen….
Hmmmmm. Hard work

[Protégé]

For your information, I happen to know how long it takes to activate a chat box. Seems to take twice as long as it would to create a long post, but that's just me speaking. Also, just as a little thought, a lot of people here have AIM, YIM, or MSN. Why don't we just use them? Also, there is another thing you have to consider. When is it up, and what happens. For example, they could have a way of tracing it to a forum. Get the forum URL, sell it out to any advertising company with low morals. Or they could just sell out the admin's e-mail. I've had that happen before. From my experience, free services aren't free. They come at the cost of adverts when you are on the internet.

Now, let's look at something. If proboards's server is down, then no one can PM, but no one can RP. Don't have to worry about stuff like that. But let's say that the cbox is put in and a bunch of people decide its useful. Now, no matter what company you get the cbox from, they have it hosted on a server where they store the posts so they can be observed. Any server has to have maitenence done at some point if the owner doesn't want it crashing. Unless they have really good servers like Proboards does, I would say they get maitenence done in 3 hours at least, at least once a month. So during that time, cbox is down. Also, if they have a server malfunction (I can give you a list of all the problems that can go wrong), the server is down. Virus in the system? Server is down. Maybe they decide to upgrade the server so it can store more cboxes, but doesn't improve the cboxes? You guesssed it, server is down. And every time that happens, we end up with a nice big white box on the bottom of the page, showing the top corner of the dreaded "This page cannot be displayed" message.

Well, what else can we say. Oh yeah, we can make it so that only members can post on the chatbox. How long does it take a spammer to create an account? About a minute, maybe 2 if they have a slower computer. Is there any way for the people to filter out the spammer and see only the posts they want to see? Not until the admin gets on. Of course, in a PM, you can see the user and choose whether or not you want to open it.

Just keep on throwing up your cards, and I will find ways to shoot them down.