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Chat/Shout Boxes

Nebulous's iconNebulous

Founder of Off Topix
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Do you have a shout box (chat box or chat room) on your forum? Do you like forums that have these?
 
C-Boxes are a good thing and a bad thing. They are good for chat in between posting, however they can decrease post count as well. I used to have a C-Box when I ran my own forum, I had to move it to the bottom of the forums so I would get posts out of my guys sometimes but they loved it and still posted!
 
I did have a chatroom but it wasn't as good as I expected. There was a chatroom for every forum created.
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I know quite a few forums with shoutboxes, they're nice if a lot of people are online, that way it's actually like talking, but otherwise it's spammy and full of ads and male ego and also distracts from the forum posting.
 
I hate them, they stop people posting, they lag the page, they use a lot of CPU. I could list 100 things why I hate them
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I have a really good one called the IPB shoutbox 2.5 final on my board. It works wonders and runs off a topic so moderating it is so easy. Most people who use it think it's great and there is no problem with people only posting in it. If I can post in both without neglecting either then anyone can IMO.
 
What I find amusing at least to me is that most boards have a pinned thread in their GC forum where short spammy posts normally found in a shoutbox are found yet they tell you that they would not want to have an actual shoutbox on the forum yet have that thread on there.



I remember one forum actually putting up a forum with that one thread in it to simulate an actual shoutbox but at the same time shot down the adding of an actual shoutbox to the board. lol
 
I really don't like shoutboxes, to be honest. They can be distracting, can sometimes make the board load slow, and I just don't really like them. I'll participate in a shoutbox chat once in a while, but I really am more comfortable posting around on the forums.
 
I have one, but its disabled. I don't see any point in them, unless your community has over 20,000+ members.
 
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