Cartographers' Guild Chat?

[isomage]

I thought it might be fun if the community had a chat room, so I took the liberty of setting one up as an experiment. If people are interested, and the Cartographers' Guild admins are okay with it, maybe we can make it official.

If you're familiar with IRC and have a client, the server is irc.otherworlders.org and the channel is #cartography

If you don't have an IRC client, I've set up a mibbit widget you can use instead: all you need to do is click this link, choose a nickname (your Guild forum username would be perfect), and click "Connect": http://widget.mibbit.com/?settings=8...%23cartography

I'm not sure how well that widget works with Internet Explorer, but it seems fine with Firefox. It doesn't need Flash or Java or anything. It does have a Google text ad at the top, unfortunately, but hey, it's free. If you're interested in doing much chatting you'll want to get a proper IRC client eventually, but in the meantime this will at least get you there.

I'll leave myself logged in whether I'm at the computer or not, just so that someone's there, so if I'm the only one there and I don't say hi I'm not ignoring you Feel free to hang around and see if others turn up; you won't get kicked out for idling or anything.

Maybe I'll see some of you there!

[Ascension]

Not a bad idea, I think I could be counted on to be there regularly...tho my typing is extremely horrible with this new keyboard (too small and I'm all thumbs). Where do I get an IRC thingy?

[Gandwarf]

http://www.mirc.com/

IRC is pretty old school I think. Spent way too much time on the Undernet

[RPMiller]

We have actually discussed adding in the chat room feature to the Guild, but IMS, it wasn't well received so I would be curious to hear how this one works out.

[Steel General]

I'd be willing to at least give it a shot.

[Ascension]

There are only two things that I can see as a real problem, spammers of course and civility. The major drawback I would see is that most of us wouldn't have a lot of time to hang around in the chat room chatting about stuff. I certainly would not be a stickler for keeping it just to maps but I would put the kill on numerous topics like which version of D&D rules the most or which political party kicks the most butt or why one sports team is better than another. I have my views on said topics but I wouldn't talk about that here.

The more I think about, the more I think that it should just be about maps or the whole flame war thing starts up.

[Greason Wolfe]

If I remember correctly (and it's been about 6 years or so since I bothered with IRC) for a fee, a chat room can be registered to a particular user who can set up scripts and grant "room kick" abilities to select individuals to prevent the spam problems. As I said, it's been some time since I messed with IRC, so all of that may have changed. One of the few problems I remember from IRC, however, is that the servers (if they get enough complaints) sometimes ban certain ISP (i.e. AOL users) from being able to access the chat rooms.

Another possibility would be AIM (a free chat app and most modern versions allow for the creation of an internet chat), I suppose, or possibly Yahoo though I have no experience with it.

GW

[Gandwarf]

Without integrating some kind of chat applet in this site, I don't think it will catch on. And even then it probably still wouldn't catch on. Yeah, I know I sound negative (sorry isomage!)... I do have some experience with these kind of things however.

[RPMiller]

Yes, there is a vBulletin chat feature which can be turned on and that is what I was referring to above. It places a chat window at the top of the forums and is visible everywhere within the forum. The idea is that you can participate in the chat at the same time you are browsing threads. Other sites that use it, seem to have someone chatting constantly throughout the day, but when we discussed it, it wasn't really something that got any love; however, it was never actually turned on here. It was only discussed.

[Gamerprinter]

I'm not so much in favor of chat.

Regarding the VBulletin chat, like on theCBG.org site. I've posted to that 3 times in the past year as a member there. It never really attracted me to post, and I got not thrill in having posted.

That said, there was discussion to have an IRC setup for use with the CWBP, while that has some merit. I'm not a chatter, so may not even use, even it were available.

My last point, is how the D&D 4e verdict thread went to "hell in a hand basket" real fast, I am afraid things like that might occur in a chatline here. I personally think that "closed thread" only had one person to blame - and he should be banned from the site for his behavior there. I'm afraid, I'd find more people to ban for using a chatline wrong. I don't want to think of members that way.

I'm just not in favor of the idea at all.

GP