About the chat?

[MisterBlueStar4 1,004]

Alright so since last week I barely see anyone on the chat system now.I wonder why is that?There used to be tons of people on the chat but now it's only 1 or 2 people.

[Cyclone Boom 16,829]

We did remove the status bar which was really causing a significant extra load on server resources.

As per my post here:

On 11/07/2017 at 1:51 AM, Cyclone Boom said:

Originally this had a status bar which showed on all site pages for all users, meaning you could chat in a popup menu while browsing the forums. Unfortunately however, it brought the undesired effect of adding extra burden on the server, resulting from excessive queries being made on the database. As a result, intermittently slowing the site down to a crawl, or causing connection timeout errors.

Following further testing we were forced to disable this feature, in favour of a dedicated window as with the previous iteration.

This means the Chat is still available using the tab navbar link, which was the same arrangement as previously with IPS Chat. As to if there's since been reduced activity, I'm really not sure what that could be attributed to. My best guess is people expect to see the number of online users shown on the tab. And seeing as this isn't any longer, people think no one is actually using it and then don't enter.

Also just to say we haven't given up on improving chat to the best of our ability. Just it's been a very busy last few months behind the scenes.

[MisterBlueStar4 1,004]

6 minutes ago, Cyclone Boom said:

We did remove the status bar which was really causing a significant extra load on server resources.

As per my post here:

This means the Chat is still available using the tab navbar link, which was the same arrangement as previously with IPS Chat. As to if there's since been reduced activity, I'm really not sure what that could be attributed to. My best guess is people expect to see the number of online users shown on the tab. And seeing as this isn't any longer, people think no one is actually using it and then don't enter.

Also just to say we haven't given up on improving chat to the best of our ability. Just it's been a very busy last few months behind the scenes.

Oh alright.Thanks for letting me know.

[CorinaMarie 29,556]

I used to hang out in the previous chat quite a bit.

The new one lacks a few features which are essential to me. Most significantly is that it may or may not post what other peeps say. I was in there and suddenly I felt like I was being ignored. Sure, I know peeps have to jump up to answer the door or get a phone call and go afk, but this was different. Like 4 of us were chatting and (with pauses between) I was the only one posting. On a whim I did F5 refresh and found out there were indeed posts between mine. This is mostly important to me if I'm just playing on my game comp and sitting in chat in case someone pops in. Since I cannot trust that it will show messages (and there's no setting for a sound when someone pops in) I don't want to appear rude by not replying if someone does join and starts chatting.

Secondly, and nearly as important is I cannot set it to beep when peeps post. (Yes, there's an option for that if (and only if) the chat window does not have focus, but that's of no use to me since I'm in chat on this comp, but turned away playing on my game comp.)

Third, but not a reason I won't use it (just annoying), is it will not display images. It'll post the linky, but not resolve into an image itself. A lot of what I did in chat was discuss game topics and we'd all show images of how we did something or other. It just borks the flow of the convo if you have to open the pic in a new tab all the time.

So, that's why I'm not there.

[MisterBlueStar4 1,004]

Just now, CorinaMarie said:

I used to hang out in the previous chat quite a bit.

The new one lacks a few features which are essential to me. Most significantly is that it may or may not post what other peeps say. I was in there and suddenly I felt like I was being ignored. Sure, I know peeps have to jump up to answer the door or get a phone call and go afk, but this was different. Like 4 of us were chatting and (with pauses between) I was the only one posting. On a whim I did F5 refresh and found out there were indeed posts between mine. This is mostly important to me if I'm just playing on my game comp and sitting in chat in case someone pops in. Since I cannot trust that it will show messages (and there's no setting for a sound when someone pops in) I don't want to appear rude by not replying if someone does join and starts chatting.

Secondly, and nearly as important is I cannot set it to beep when peeps post. (Yes, there's an option for that if (and only if) the chat window does not have focus, but that's of no use to me since I'm in chat on this comp, but turned away playing on my game comp.)

Third, but not a reason I won't use it (just annoying), is it will not display images. It'll post the linky, but not resolve into an image itself. A lot of what I did in chat was discuss game topics and we'd all show images of how we did something or other. It just borks the flow of the convo if you have to open the pic in a new tab all the time.

So, that's why I'm not there.

Now I see why barely anyone uses the chat.