DVinfo chat rooms

[Mitchell Stookey]

This is simply an idea I had that I think would be great fun and beneficial as well but feel free to shoot it down Chris if it is expensive, big hassle, or if you just don't like the idea. I think it'd be wonderful if we had a DVinfo chat room that all the members could talk to eachother in. Obviously it would need to be broken down so there weren't ALL members in the same room. But I think that if we had one for each main category, such as DV Network, Tools of DV production, Standard Def, High Def, Post Production, Special Interest, Community, and then finally Now For Something Completely Different... that would be specific enough.

I think it would work great because then you could really communicate with members, and chat about things that are related to topics but not really worth posting. I think friendships within the members would be much stronger. I do not know if that would be expensive, or a massive hassle or what but I think it's an idea worth bringing up and looking into. Thanks for listening (reading).

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by Mitchell Stookey

This is simply an idea I had that I think would be great fun and beneficial as well but feel free to shoot it down Chris if it is expensive, big hassle, or if you just don't like the idea. I think it'd be wonderful if we had a DVinfo chat room that all the members could talk to eachother in.

Hey Mitchell, I've been admining a videography chat room on the Undernet for about 2 years. We really only have a handfull of members, as opposed to #photography which typically has a several dozen. I honestly think that videography, true people with passion, is a thinner field, thus our low numbers in our chat room.

I would support any chat room. We have some good people in ours, some animators, some videographers. By no means would I want to take away from this wonderul board, but feel free to stop by anytime.

Steven Davis

aka. CosmicElv #videography irc undernet

[Bill Porter]

Videography on IRC may be thinner but to offer chat rooms on dvinfo.net I bet would be a big hit. People who want to pick each other's brains or help each other in realtime rather than posting and waiting a day, would probably cruise in there quite a bit.

I have seen the same phenomenon with other technical fields where a very active forum begets a very active series of chat rooms. Sometimes people just hang out in a chat room with it minimized, then come back when someone pops in and says hello or asks a question.

[Josh Hibbard]

Yeah, chat rooms are great for the kind of questions too trivial to warrant a thread, but always useful to have answered.

[Bill Porter]

LOL, well said! That is exactly it.

[Pete Bauer]

Hi folks,

I can't speak (or write) for Mr. Hurd, but I personally don't want to see chat rooms here and would guess that we won't. Here's my take on it:

There is no video-related question that is too small to ask here (although I sure wish more folks would actually do a search first!), and responses to questions usually show up pretty quickly. Answers wouldn't come much faster by chat, because as people log on to DVinfo and scan the new posts, they'll respond about as fast as they can type if they have an answer. Chat won't help speed that process.

Also, unless chats are separately catalogued and posted (that would be an administrative mess!), they are transient and therefore only help the one person who had the question, not the next 10 people who log on and have the same question.

As it is, it's a big job to maintain DVinfo to the high standards that it keeps. We "Wranglers" (forum moderators) do this for free, because of our own interest, and I suspect that most are like me in that they simply don't have even more time to dedicate to chat rooms, which would be VERY difficult to successfully moderate. It takes relatively few bad eggs to create a stench --even now we often have to weed out random idiot flamers that show up -- and even good folks sometimes get too emotional about stuff in the heat of the moment and cause hurt feelings. We're not a typical online community; we keep it squeaky clean. I believe that chat rooms would tend to foul the pristine atmosphere here.

The message board system is serving our growing community well. I say if people just want to chit-chat, that can be done using any of the big IM services that already exist. Sorry to rain on the parade, but IMHO we will be best served to keep doing what we are doing well.

[Boyd Ostroff]

What Pete said.

I have never used any of the chat programs myself, but if you're into that then I suppose your could list your AIM address (or whatever those things are ;-) in your signature.

[Mike Teutsch]

Again, what Pete said.

A chat room where questions were handled would defeat the search function, which is a mainstay of this forum. Being able to ferret out the needed info is what is forum is all about, and where its value comes from.

Mike

[Mitchell Stookey]

Pete,
I think you might be right about it being very difficult to moderate and alot more work. That's why I just tossed it up as a thought. However I also expected that if there were chat rooms people would still be using their real names rather than handles (something I love about this site) and that alone I thought might control people from misbehaving. Maybe IM would be more appropriate but I thought it could be fun to talk in real time with the members here. Either way what we have here now is great.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

I wouldn't want chatrooms here either actually.
The great thing about this is it's not just a chatroom, but a source of information!
You typ a question, someone answers it, and someone else can read it and learn from it.
It's already this system for years, and it's has proven it's worth.
I wouldn't be mad or anything, but I think it's better like it is now.
I think you'll get more more off-topic things, and if people talk in chatrooms, if they have a problem, who can afterwards read all the things to learn from them?

[Steven Davis]

Originally Posted by Mitchell Stookey

Pete,
I think you might be right about it being very difficult to moderate and alot more work. That's why I just tossed it up as a thought.

Mitchell, ideas are what moves people to do. That being said, I thought your idea was a good one. So I applaud you for the idea.

That being said, this forum is a great place to come and get help. I am always grateful for the input, and the opportunity to provide the same. This forum and many reputable sources of information are what makes net a nifty thing.

[Bill Porter]

As far as having the answers no longer visible to the public, that's a good point, I hadn't thought of that and I agree. IM does provide a nice way around step by step exchanges too.

Edit: I was posting at the same time as Steven but I second that, loudly! The exchange of information and goodwill on the net, and especially this place, makes it wonderful. Stop for a moment and think of all the man-hours and stress, and money too, that are saved by people sharing what they've learned on their own time or their own nickel.

[Greg Boston]

I fully agree with Pete's assessment.

-gb-

[Hugh DiMauro]

Does this mean that I can't chat with Chris Hurd and ask what he's wearing?

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Hugh DiMauro

Does this mean that I can't chat with Chris Hurd and ask what he's wearing?

What I'm wearing, Hugh? You mean right now? Why, nothing but a belly-chain and a smile, of course.

Pete Bauer has eloquently summed up my own feelings about chat rooms quite well. I've never really been convinced of their utility. I'm sure they're fun, but personally I don't have time to chat... I guess I'm just not a chatty kind of guy. Nothing against anybody who likes online chat; it's not my kind of thing is all, so I guess that's why it's never been implemented here (and this topic has been brought up before, once or twice in the past).

There may be a handful of folks at DV Info who remember me from the Canopus days when I moderated their message boards with Mike Downey. We did a few chat sessions back then; Mike Martin had a weekly get together by chat. For good friends, which we were, it was a fun way to say "hi, how are ya" in near-real time and snicker about several obscure inside jokes, but beyond that, it didn't really accomplish that much.

I think the traffic and response time on our message boards is fast enough that we can get help to people who need it fairly quickly. Any disadvantage to not having the near-real time speed of online chat is, in my opinion, more than compensated for by the permanent archival of these discussions and the ease at which they can be pulled up and referenced. We are on our way to accumulating half a million posts. A lot of common questions have been frequently answered again and again. I think our "search" tool provides quicker help than a chat session would. And I heartily agree that no question is too small to ask here at DV Info. So, although our discussions are asynchronous, they are archived; and perhaps more importantly, available to the occasional passer-by, the casula surfer, and all those folks who care only to silently hang out and lurk. And that's a pretty big audience!

As far as having online chat for the fun of it, if we did it, it would not be moderated or archived. And while I'm personally not opposed to having it, the fact is that there are a lot of other things, ah, "under development" that have precedence, so I couldn't even give you a time frame right now of when it would even happen. But anything is possible, and until then, there's always out-sourced IM as Pete has mentioned.