Brief history of the idea: In 2003 is was asked about to no answer. In 2005 it was rejected by a couple people. Now that it is 2010, let's revisit the question: Would having a real time chat room benefit, harm, or have no effect on the Degreeinfo.com community?
It could diminish participation, or increase it, or leave it the same. This isn't really known without the right data and can't be assumed intuitively. I don't know if there's ever been an analysis of the impact chat rooms on posts per day for public forums but I doubt there has. Anyone have any anecdotes on this? Please share, with a mind that they aren't necessarily representative of the general experience of all forums. Also, chat logs could be made searchable. Not sure how useful they would be but it might prove valuable for some.
Evidence for this or are you going on a "hunch" or intuitive guess? So far we have +2 for the (possibly false) assumption that a chat room would decrease participation in the forum. Any other ideas of possible harm? I can think of one: more bandwidth and work for admins and mods. A benefit would be quicker answers to simple questions that have been asked repeatedly in the forum. Also, perhaps chatters would ask beneficial questions that they wouldn't necessarily want to start a thread about. (A timestamped, searchable log would be useful here.) A "hang out" area would allow chatters to get to know each other better (ie. networking) -- not sure if this is even desirable. I am pretty neutral on the idea but if there was a chat room, I'd probably stop by and say hello.
That's a good idea unless a chat room is so dangerous that in that time it would irreparably damage the forum (probably unlikely). Here's a revised question then: Would you support a chat room feature on DegreeInfo.com if it could be demonstrated that it had a negligible effect on the amount of forum activity? I don't see a chat room being set up unless it sufficiently benefits the owners of this web site somehow. Not sure that it would other than being "neat".
The bulk of the responses to posts are done by 20-30 people on this site and they post at all hours of the day and night. People often post a question and check back in the next day or two. I don't sit around waiting for people to post; I pop in here and there and check the new posts. If I see one I find interesting I respond, or sometimes I wait a day or more while I look into what they are asking for. Chip would never do it anyways. If the site moved to a chat room style I would move on as it’s not a format I like.
So, your hypothesis is that the 20-30 active people on the site would, upon introduction of the chat room, move all discussion there. At that point, the forum activity would run dry and all conversations would dwindle. I suppose that's possible but I don't think it is likely. I don't think it is a zero sum game. Those who visit the chat room may differ completely from the forum posters. There's also the false dichotomy of "chat room style" versus "forum style". I think both can live together. Here's one example of thousands: Survivalist Forum Survival Gear Reviews and Self Sufficiency Articles It has both an active forum and active chat room. You wouldn't say the forum was "chat room style". You probably wouldn't even know the chat room existed unless you looked for it.
I hate real time chat rooms. They're simply not for me. However... I buy into the idea for a real time chat room at this website. It would be pretty cool!
