Over on the SpaceVenture Kickstarter comments page there was some talk of creating a similar kind of chat option to SQN. The irc channel is great for certain things but it would be nice to be able to come back and catch up without having to ask a lot of questions.

 

It would be nice if something like a comment thread could be installed under the Chat heading since that would be it's purpose and would need to be reverse sorted from a regular forum thread anyway. Then several topics could be started as tabs. The main tab should probably remain an irc #sq portal. The rest would then have a similar look and functionality to the SpaceVenture comments section. People could use this forum thread to request topics for inclusion. Here are some that were mentioned already:

 

SpaceVenture (Obviously)

Space Quest (Obviously)

Adventure Games

Music

Book Club

Draw Something (The mobile game. Yes this was an honest request.)

 

I'm not sure if comments should remain in a perpetual state or drop off after a certain number of pages (say 20..?) to keep it relatively clean. This would also help in the consolidation process I think. Thoughts?

Hmm, you want a comments thread like on our news articles? So what's wrong with using the forums?

Nothing so big as that. The shorter twitter-style comments makes it a lot easier to keep up. Main ideas and threads are great in the forum, but a running chat thread for certain topics would be nice.

 

I think idea mainly came up because of how steady the kickstarter commenters have been. It's like having an IRC channel with a public chat history (no need to be logged in all the time just to keep up)

OK, so like a shoutbox?

In my opinion, preserving the discussion context is one of the things that made the kickstarter chat work so much better than IRC. In IRC the list of users is stateful, but the discussion is not, can't see anything that happened before you logged in (ignoring possible out-of-band irc logs, which may not have current day's discussion). So irc channels often end up with this huge list of supposed participants and nobody saying anything for 95% of the time. Normally I'm not a big one for starting discussions, unless I have a really burning question that I can't answer from online searches (which is rare). So that sort of situation is discouraging like a blank page staring back at me, and I normally end up getting bored and logging out pretty quickly.

 

On the kickstarter comment page, you get the opposite -- the discussion is stateful, but the participants are not monitored. Plenty of people can lurk and occasionally pop in with comments when they wish too, without being a drag on chat inertia: avoid the "channel full of bots" syndrome where there are 80 people in the channel list and NOBODY is responding -- clearly your comments are too boring for even 1 out of 80 people to respond! With the non-explicit participant list, unless you're paranoid, you can assume it's just a slow time with nobody else watching, rather than realizing there are 80 lurkers all ignoring you ;)

 

So to get down to implementation details, I would say similar to a shout box, but taking up a full page to fit a nice long set of most recent comments on the current page, and periodically shifting oldest comments off onto history pages. Number of history pages can be limited like Nockgeneer said, it's just for a bit of context for somebody who comes back after a few days. I have not seen another shout-box-like app other than kickstarter that fits this criteria, so it may need to be custom web app. On the other hand I have never seen people having nearly as much fun on a shout-box-like-app (unless you count twitter, shudder) so it could be well worth time spent on a custom app. If my time weren't well overcomitted already I'd do one myself... but maybe if other people want to collaborate and write it in python, C, or perl I could at least help

I would cautiously raise the issue of having too many communication outlets. I quite like IRC, and #sq has already been established for quite some time.

 

The KS comments quickly got out of hand and very unmanageable for me, because there was no threading, and you basically had to scroll through five or six pages to get to where you last left off.

 

 

The way I see it, we've already got this stuff cornered:

- If you want to chat, use #sq.

- If you want to share your opinion with the world, your SQN profile lets you set a public status.

 

We could just emphasize the "public statuses" on a special "shoutbox" page, or something?

I'd also be concerned with moderation of the comments. IP.Board has features which support something like the KS comments thread (I mean, check out the article comments I mentioned above - we could just have a blank article with a comments area).

Ok I hope I don't offend anybody who likes the IRC channel, but #sq is normally rather slow when I've popped in. Maybe there's an existing group of friends from other timezones who have exciting discussions whenever I'm not online, who knows. I predict a small percentage of people who found sqnet through the kickstarter will be IRC enthusiasts who don't mind lurking all day waiting for something to happen -- I certainly have some friends who are habitual IRC lurkers. However most of the newcomers and their energy brought in by kickstarter publicity will eventually dissipate instead of migrating over here, if IRC remains the only chat option. Maybe that's fine though, since the "energy" also involved a fair amount of chaos; maybe just attracting the most dedicated fans to join the forums is what you guys who kept the flame burning would prefer. In that case I'll drop the suggestions for "improvements" right now. I don't mean to be annoying, remember hating it when someone used to try to change my LUG all around in an attempt to get better attendance, when we didn't want more attendance at the cost of charging membership fees and so forth.

 

P.S. I don't get how the public status thing applies at all... it always seemed about as pointless as facebook games *ducks in case of lurking facebook fans*

OK, let's give it a try: http://www.spaceques...ml/_/general-r1

 

Let me know if this works for you guys. Guests can post and everything. We can add other "threads" pretty easily.

OK, let's give it a try: http://www.spaceques...ml/_/general-r1

 

Let me know if this works for you guys. Guests can post and everything.

Anticipating user feedback: Is it possible to sort those comments descending from newest to oldest? If we're looking to mimic the functionality of the KS comments, that would be a closer match.

 

Jess

Not at this time. I don't see an easy way to do it without completely reworking the site design.

Not at this time. I don't see an easy way to do it without completely reworking the site design.

In that case, I think oldest to newest works beautifully! :D

 

Jess

I like the test for now, I just feel like it won't get traction unless it mimics kickstarter a little better. I wonder if the kickstarter comments page should/could just be added in an iFrame somewhere. That would maybe be easiest but I don't know if it's allowed or how it's long-term feasibility would work out.

Don't be stupid. I'm not messing with it anymore.

Ok I hope I don't offend anybody who likes the IRC channel, but #sq is normally rather slow when I've popped in. Maybe there's an existing group of friends from other timezones who have exciting discussions whenever I'm not online, who knows.

 

I hear your point loud and clear. I wish there was more action in the #sq channel as well. And no, it's not us foreigners having miles of brilliant discussions while you're sound asleep. ;) It's just quiet in there, and despite people like Chrono2012, nockgeneer, Frede, E1ven and Javacat checking in almost daily, and despite people like pcj and myself being "always connected," there's just not much action going on in there. I wish there was. And I have no idea how to generate more action.

 

Maybe we could get 2GFA in there for a public event. That would certainly generate some excitement, at least for a little while. :)

It's just quiet in there, and despite people like Chrono2012, nockgeneer, Frede, E1ven and Javacat checking in almost daily, and despite people like pcj and myself being "always connected," there's just not much action going on in there. I wish there was. And I have no idea how to generate more action.

 

I tried once with a channel for our local LUG, but couldn't figure out how to build momentum. I think the channel is still there, with a few people who include it in autologin and do a fine imitation of logger bots ;)

 

That's why I've been trying to figure out what the magic formula is for those kickstarter boards; other chat formats I've tried have never had the same sort of momentum. Standard forums have a different chemistry, where it's not quasi-real-time interactive discussions but slower paced and spread out among many different threads, so none of them are growing fast enough that you can kill time by sitting there and refreshing every couple minutes. With IRC you definitely have real-time, but the momentum can die out instantly... newcomer comes into a blank page unless conversation is still going on, so there is no "changing of shifts" like on the kickstarter boards, where the newcomers get to see the crazy posts from the guys just left for work/bed/whatever & take off from there.

 

I suspect that a lot of people treat facebook like this quasi-real-time medium for getting together with online friends, but I hate facebook and I think I'm not alone in this geeky crowd. So I hope there can continue to be an alternative. Unless of course there are hot new sci-fi games launching all year long, and we just move between boards on kickstarter...

I suspect that a lot of people treat facebook like this quasi-real-time medium for getting together with online friends, but I hate facebook and I think I'm not alone in this geeky crowd. So I hope there can continue to be an alternative. Unless of course there are hot new sci-fi games launching all year long, and we just move between boards on kickstarter...

 

...or we just keep at it with the SpaceVenture comments. Not sure why but it's just fun to be over there. Was thinking it might be possible to move it over here somehow but considering pcj's comment it looks like it would be better just to leave well enough alone ;)

Yeah, have fun with that.

...or we just keep at it with the SpaceVenture comments. Not sure why but it's just fun to be over there. Was thinking it might be possible to move it over here somehow but considering pcj's comment it looks like it would be better just to leave well enough alone ;)

 

Another possibility would be chat hosted at the upcoming "backer exclusive Spaceventure Insider website", can see if whoever runs that website is interested in some experiments to get more backer involvement

So, this is what I was looking at: http://disqus.com/ Though I would think penguinfan's suggestion makes a lot of sense since the ones who will most likely use it will be backers used to commenting over at the kickstarter.

 

I also have to add a disclaimer that the suggestion was not born out of dissatisfaction with the current forum, but a desire to add to it. :-)

That might work. Try http://www.spacequest.net/index.php/page/quick_chat.html

Seems to be working well! At the moment we're still defending the comment count title against ouya over there but this looks great for moving forward!