Live Chat? About This Page:

[lilsweepr]

Has the idea been passed around for a live chat room on these boards? Might be pretty neat to pose questions "live" and get a real time answer. It could be where you have to be logged in before you could enter the chat room. Just a thought.

[LilMarcieMouse]

Sounds cool.

[Suzy Q'Disney]

This would be wonderful. It could be a great place to hang out and at the same time keep some of the silly fun stuff live instead of lingering.

Susan

[Dave Marx]

There are technical problems in creating a chat room that takes advantage of an existing PassPorter Posts message board login. As neat as it sounds, it's a bit beyond PassPorter's budget and the capabilities of our message board software.

I'd like to suggest two alternate solutions, either of which could be implemented almost immediately.

1) Use the existing chat rooms that are part of either the PassPorterWDW Yahoo! Group, or the PassPorterWDW_News Yahoo! Group. Currently, both of these groups are only used for our e-mail lists, but they have many other useful features, chat included. Anyone interested in chatting needs to create a Yahoo! membership or use an existing membership, and subscribe to the group we designate for chat. After that, folks can just sign into Yahoo! and chat whenever they want.

2) Use an AOL Instant Messenger Chat Room, like we already do for Joe Carioca's Sunday trivia games. In this case, we'd assign a permanent room name ("PassPorter Villa Chat"?), and anyone wishing to chat can use AIM to open the room, or join the chat already in progress. (Regular AOL members can also enter the room, using their existing AOL software.) The advantage of using AIM over Yahoo! Groups is that folks can use AIM for one-on-one conversations at any time, even when there aren't enough folks to keep a regular chat humming. (Our Profiles include a space for an AIM ID.)

One of the problems of operating a round-the-clock chat room with a community of this size is that the room will frequently be near-empty. People show up, wait a few minutes for others to arrive, and leave. Scheduled chats would be a better idea, at least in the beginning. I suggest that if folks want to chat, that we create a Chat Announcements topic in the The Backyard: Gatherings, Meets and Group Trips forum. Anyone interested in scheduling a chat could post a Reply in that topic, announcing their intent to "host" a chat at a particular time. The host would be responsible for being there to greet all others for the duration of that scheduled chat, but would have no other official responsibilities.

Your thoughts?

[LilMarcieMouse]

Dave thats good advice, we wouldn't want to cause trouble for you.We will have to try it.

[Chrissi]

Funny this should come up. My DH and I were just kicking around the idea of hosting a weekly AOL Instant Messenger chat due to the sudden surge in group meets. I'd love to host them myself, but the baby won't stay quiet for that long and DH won't always be available. We're not sure if we'd have the time to host an hour or two hour long chat every week, but maybe I could post a weekly invitation in The Backyard and ask for someone different to host each week. PM me or post in The Backyard if you'd be interested. Let's get the ball rolling!