As many of you may have noticed, this past week we decided to try out a new shoutbox feature in place of the old chatbox. You can read about it in the initial announcement thread here.

Now that a week has been up, our trial of the premium has ended. Thus why you may have noticed some ads in the shoutbox.  Before we decide to pay and stay with this option, we wanted to make sure it was worth the money and that members actually like the new way to chat. You can read more about what features we get with premium here.

With that said, please vote in this poll to let us know what you think. You can voice more specific comments and opinions in this thread. As always, please keep it civil and constructive.

We are open for other options on a chat feature but this one seems to work best for the forum from an admin point of view.


Thank you!

I like it. There's a private chat feature, it's here everywhere, not only on the main page, it's not linked to forumotion, so there's not as many problems with it. It's easy to use, it doesn't take too much place, it does the same as the old chat without its problem. And while it's sad we can't use the forum's smiley, well we have them everywhere else.

I voted.

i only voted no because i wish it was at the bottom of the page instead of the side, but that's just me.

Voted! I like that its near the top of the page, as well as the ability to look back on the chat and use avatars.

For me the ads aren't that annoying and it automatically refreshes so I don't think paying for real-time chat is really worth it, other than that like its identical. 

I like that it's up near the top and more people are using it.

I voted yes, even though I know I won't be using it that much.

So far I'm very happy with this chat. I enjoy that it has a sound feature,  and that you can pop out the window. As an admin I appreciate that it's easy to use to moderate and it keeps a large number of chat records, the other one met none of these requirements at all. 

Personally I enjoy the private conversations and the ads aren't a deal breaker but are a distraction since we keep the rest of the site ad free.

I like the new chatbox and I like the new location of the chatbox. It's nice that you can always see who is in the chat without logging in and you can see it on any page of the forums. Having an avatar is a wonderful touch. And, it's also awesome that the chatbox does not kick you off. If you have an account with Gravatar, then you stay logged in.

However, if I try to log-in to the RP chatbox, then I have so many problems. I can't use the same log-in as the main chatbox, so I have to make a second one, but I don't remember it, so I have to make a third, and so on and so forth.

It does kind of suck that we do not have custom emoticons and smileys, but I spoke with the yourchatbox.com people and they said this would be a feature added in the future.

Here are my thoughts on the new chatbox!

Pros:
+I like that it has allowed more people to get involved with each other, and that it is visible throughout the entire site. The other chat was sort of hidden. When I first joined GC, I didn't even know there was a separate chatbox until I read through the forum rules and saw it mentioned.
+I reaaaally like being able to multitask between the chat and RP/drawing/videos/research/etc. without worrying about being kicked every few minutes due to inactivity. The other chat drove me nuts with its 5(?) minute idle limit.
+The sound feature! Again, this is useful for people who are trying to work on other things while chatting.
+Using avatars
+Being able to look back at what was said. I remember the other chatbox did this too, but it only seemed to save the log for a reaaaally short period of time. With this new chat, you can come back a week later and still have the ability to look back at what you and others said.
+Although I have not used it yet, the private chat feature sounds pretty nice!

Cons:
-Can't use the forum emotes
-The other chat let you see more messages at once (which I guess would be more useful when there are a ton of people trying to talk at the same time in a meeting).
-The chat filter. (It makes no sense! XD) I liked how the previous chat box replaced bad words with SM-themed euphemisms.  
-It's kind of annoying to me that the new chatbox seems to make the rest of the site lag from time to time (esp. on mobile). The other chat didn't interfere so much because it wasn't actively running on the page unless you chose to join it.
-Anybody can see it and use it. (You couldn't even go into the other chat unless you were a member of the forums.) I guess this is both good and bad. XD Good because people interested in joining the site can ask us questions, and bad because bored people can waltz on in and give us problems or take an existing member's name and pretend to be them. (Do people still even do that with public forum chatboxes anymore?...'Cuz I remember that being a big problem in the embedded shoutboxes on Invisionfree RP forums when I was a teenager.)

VBabe wrote:

However, if I try to log-in to the RP chatbox, then I have so many problems. I can't use the same log-in as the main chatbox, so I have to make a second one, but I don't remember it, so I have to make a third, and so on and so forth.

From what I recall, when Queen set up the RP one, it is a whole different account than the main forum one. I think they don't have an option to have one account and multiple shoutboxes. I'll have to double check. However, I was able to make a Small Lady accounton both with the same password... So theoretically you should've been able to as well but I guess no one really explained it to you at the time. :/

Andalusite wrote:

Cons:
-Can't use the forum emotes
-The other chat let you see more messages at once (which I guess would be more useful when there are a ton of people trying to talk at the same time in a meeting).
-The chat filter. (It makes no sense! XD) I liked how the previous chat box replaced bad words with SM-themed euphemisms.  
-It's kind of annoying to me that the new chatbox seems to make the rest of the site lag from time to time (esp. on mobile). The other chat didn't interfere so much because it wasn't actively running on the page unless you chose to join it.
-Anybody can see it and use it. (You couldn't even go into the other chat unless you were a member of the forums.) I guess this is both good and bad. XD Good because people interested in joining the site can ask us questions, and bad because bored people can waltz on in and give us problems or take an existing member's name and pretend to be them. (Do people still  even do that with public forum chatboxes anymore?...'Cuz I remember that being a big problem in the embedded shoutboxes on Invisionfree RP forums when I was a teenager.)

Gunna answer a couple of your points here as I think they are valid cons and I think i can address the concerns. As Vbabe mentioned, we may have the ability to add GC emotes in the future (that would be a yay!) depends if they ever add the feature to add your own emotes.

I have NO idea how to fix the chat filter other than turn it off, that's about all the options I see in the admin cp for yourshoutbox. Seeing that we are a pg13 site...well, we could consider testing having it off..but it hasn't really been an issue yet and I'd rather people not coming in our chatbox swearing off up a storm. (Also the filters from the main forum also worked in the old chat box hence why you got chibi and moonturds lol).

The lag that you experience should not be caused by the chat. Forummotion is known for having lag issues off and on and it seems to have been particularly bad this week. We've even had times where we'd go to the help forum to see if there's any reported issues and their own help forum was down. Soooo yeah. That's all on forummotion, not yourshoutbox.

If we have issues with trolls or anything of the like, there are options to turn up the security. If it becomes necessary to do that, we will. :3

>.> It looks like Small Lady beat me too it.


We do currently have 2 separate accounts for the RP one and the Main Admin one, but there appears to be an option to have more than one shoutbox. However the RP one I set up is fully left open to Sailor Uranus and I originally set it up with my personal information.  We could consider trying to start another new one and getting rid of the other chat box, but there is no guarantee that you won't need different accounts. 

Thanks for the great feedback guys, I really appreciate the details :3

i really don't want to have it, but if everyone else likes it, what can you do? though i really wish there was an option to shrink it. or not have it show up for each individual person but this would probably not be possible.

i just know i'm not going to use it, and i have no desire to use it. if i want to talk to someone, i'll find someone to yabber with in skype.

And thats totally fine. That's why we have the official Skype Chat. But the main point of it is to also encourage activity on the forums and there are some people who don't have Skype for whatever reason. So when we have forum live chatting events, we have a free venue where you don't need to download anything or make an account to join.

Bumping for any more votes!

i'm going to be "that person" right now.

I voted no actually, never liked the idea of the chat box on the side, is uncomfortable, and for some reason i simply don't like this type of chat box, the old one is way better, i didn't had to create a user or "save" a user so nobody uses mine...so, no.

Thank you everyone for your feedback! We are still open to more feedback and voting on the poll but it seems obvious that the new shoutbox chat is here to stay. If you have any other feedback, feel free to post it here.

Thanks again!