Live Chat / IRC repost  

Re-posted here on Kevin565's advice, including his post and my response. 

As a relatively new member, i do still look back at a lot of the older threads and i came across quite a few pertaining to byc having a live chat in the past. If there is a group of users that would use a live chat, might I offer a solution. I run a handful of irc live chats. I don't do message boards or blogs or anything of the sort, I just do chats. That being said, I do see the use of a live chat being helpful as a way to find information but i also see the need for control and moderation as this is not an age restricted site. If the users her have a real want for a live chat, I would have no problem setting up an irc & webchat directly for byc users. And after speaking with my moderators we would even provide moderation for the time being. I would love to have some input from the users and mods on this. thanks

Originally Posted by Kevin565 

Agreed. Most of our chats are users from other sites and divide the chat from the site itself for those exact reasons. Our network has about 30 current mods so we have someone around nearly all of the time, we also utilize functions of irc to control content in the chat channel itself, thus taking some of the strain off the mods. Please, please feel free to ask me any questions you may have either here publicly or in pm. Thanks

Chat isn't ever meant to be a information storage system like a forum is(at least that's not how we run), but as an additional resource to a forum. One example would be our hay & crop chat linked exclusively to a hay & crop forum. Some questions just come out better in conversation vs posting. IMO some of the highlights since launching that irc have been some of the old timers taking the time to talk to a newbie and re-assure them, as well as those who learned something returning to post that knowledge on the forum. I share your opinion, on its own a chat is a lousy information database, i however do believe ran correctly it can be a good resource. Just my two cents.

I have however heard some of the same issues from other boards when they have tried to double duty ie, running the chat and boards and well as mods from boards trying to moderate a chat as well. Our longest running chat has been up 6 years 4 months & 26 days. Before we took over the chat aspect they too tried to run it off the boards box and use the boards mods. I think it lasted 6 months maybe. I have found its too much of a load unless you have tons of mods active in the chat as well, but with most large forum communities that isn't the case. Food for future thought.