BYC Chat - Saying Goodbye to an old friend

[Nifty-Chicken]

We regretfully need to announce that the BYC chat system will be removed from BYC.

Please know this was NOT an easy or a quick decision. There were very lengthy discussions with members and between our moderation staff to weigh the pros and cons of leaving the chat system active on BYC. At the end of all the discussions we recognized that some great things come from having a live chat system, but we also realized that there were too many cons that overall outweighed the benefits.

As I mentioned, there were a lot of points we discussed, but here are the key deciding factors:

1) Chat is VERY hard for our moderators to police.
2) Chat has been a place where very inappropriate topics and discussions have "slipped through" and not been reported.
3) Chat requires a lot of server resources, especially when there are a lot of members on all the time
4) Most of the topics in chat are not chicken related and again, are too frequently inappropriate
5) Proportionately we see more fighting and drama reports from chat than we do from the forum. This problem is compounded with the lack of reporting and moderation tools in chat.
6) When there are helpful topics and discussion in chat they come and go and are lost forever. The beauty of the BYC forum is that once wonderful information is posted, it remains public forever! The search engines find it and it has the ability to help thousands of people. Chat on the other hand is VERY limiting because it only helps the peeps that happen to be online at that very moment.

These were the key factors in our decision. I want to emphasize that it wasn't an easy decision, but after much thought we realized it was a necessary one.

Again, we're sorry to have to make this announcement, but at the end of the day we need to make hard decisions to maintain our safe and friendly community for the long run so we can celebrate another wonderful 4 years of chicken fun!

 

[shellyga]

Coming from a person that loved the chat feature.. I am sad..

But I also have little or no idea as to the inner workings of managing a forum like this -- so I respect your decision..

Now to go clear out some space for more PM's.

We appreciate having a place to discuss chickens and appreciate all your hard work.

Shelly

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

I've never used the chat function. I mean, I like the social part of BYC, but when I here I tend to look up information I need or try to help somebody that has posted a question.

 

[StevenW.]

At least you told us first

 

[kyeschicks]

I completely understand you Nifty.

 

[WriterofWords]

I stopped using it long ago for reasons mentioned but it's still sad to see it go!

 

[EweSheep]

I hardly ever go in there and just last week I popped up. It was good to see peeps in there but the conversations were kind of OK. No big deal but I completely understand the reasons why you decided to take out the chat features.

 

[WingingIt]

Understood. Thanks for the explanation and careful consideration, y'all do a great job running this place!

 

[mississippifarmboy]

I never was smart enough to figure it out anyway.

But as always, I respect and understand anything you have to do to keep BYC safe, fun and going strong.

 

[Mrsfoote]

Too bad as a regular user not all topics were about chickens as many topics on here aren't can't talk about chickens all the time but it was a great place for new people to come ask questions who need answers in the moment rather then waiting for a reply I know me myself as others have used it for many an emergency it was one of the things that made this website so great...met really great people on there and its sad for us regulars who will have to go else where to talk.