I think it could then end up weakening the forum because if an issue is, as you say, that people have to decide where to post what, etc., the chat can lead many, for that reason and/or for convenience, to return to discuss topics in the chat instead of adapting to the forum with its structure, its topics, its tags, etc.
Besides, what need it would cover that The Watercooler Chat Thread doesn’t? (leaving aside the notifications issue, because at least for me the important notifications are the ones related to what is written here in the forum, not in a chat).
Ok, I think it’s worth trying, and if it works well it will be awesome. If you’re willing to install the plug-ins so we can try it, even if you personally are opposed (if so I would ask for you to suspend final judgement until we try it ), then great! If not then I will do it when I have the time, as I have a strong opinion that we should try it, though I don’t know yet whether we will keep it.
I second Claudiu’s empirical approach although Miguel’s reasoning I consider very sound and he may well end up being correct in that with such little traffic users may well direct all their participation towards just one venue at the neglect of the other. My prediction is that the chat will end up consuming nearly all the participation and the activity on the forum will wither. But we’re scientists here so testing our predictions could be part of the game. Perhaps consider some metrics to evaluate the relative success or failure of the experiment.
I just noticed this morning I seem to receive notifications about any action taken by anyone one the website. Is this because I have been made into a moderator?
No, @Kub933, you have not been made a moderator as I can see and indeed you wrote a personal message, but you could see for yourself that administrators like @claudiu can read private messages if they are not encrypted!
Can you both tell me where/how those notifications were received, send a screenshot of them…?
Because, for example, login in with my other user (“test”, no administrator, no moderator; just a regular user) this is what I see right now:
And here it is the list of its notifications:
What I did notice, is that “Dismiss” seems not to work, but I have never tried it before and it may not be a new problem…
Hey Miguel, yes I will attach a screenshot which shows the notifications, you can see that they show any action taken by anyone on the site.
Whereas before I would only receive notifications when someone would tag, reply, like etc to my posts/threads specifically.
So before the notifications were only to do with things relevant to me and now it seems like they have trippled in volume and seem to be showing anything that anyone has done even if it is not relevant to me.
For example why am I receiving notifications to do with entries to Felix’s diary when I have never posted in there. I also seem to receive notifications about people sending private messages between each other etc except I can’t view the content.
I hope that makes sense and this is not in any way me knocking all the awesome work you’ve been doing on the site, it’s really great!
Yea something broke something… it is probably the Babble plug-in honestly . We can disable it to see if that’s the issue … although you & Srinath seem to like it
Possibly, because I read that uninstalling some plugins not only does not solve the problems they caused, but can damage the site even more (unfortunately, one of them is Babble).
So, I’ll disable Babble first.
If the problem persists, then I’ll remove Who’s Online.
), then great! If not then I will do it when I have the time, as I have a strong opinion that we should try it, though I don’t know yet whether we will keep it.
. We can disable it to see if that’s the issue … although you & Srinath seem to like it
