A Hybrid Between Chat and Message Boards?

qirtaiba asks: "Synchronous discussion software (in simple terms, chat) allows discussions to take place instantly and interactively, but asynchronous software (discussion boards, a la Slashdot) have the advantage that they allow people from different timezones to participate equally. Does anyone know of a hybrid? The closest thing I have found is a proprietary 'Commons Console' offered as a service by Conflict Lab. This is not just an idle question. The Internet Governance Forum (or IGF — you can find more information here) is meeting for the first time in Athens from October 30th to the 2nd of November, this year. A lot of people who might like to participate aren't going to be able to make it to Athens, so the IGF has asked for ideas on how best to enable remote participation. Can Slashdot help?"

Chat == Forum

[mwvdlee]

Chat is basically a non-threaded forum, running in real-time (which is to say it has lag below a certain treshhold).

The real difference is non-threaded forums (e.g. Bulletin Boards) vs. theaded forums such as NNTP or the slashdot comments.

If slashdot were refreshed every tenth of a second, it would be a threaded chatbox.

Now there _is_ a difference in how people communicate over chat vs. forums; chat typically contains a single sentence in each "post", whereas forum posts typically contain multiple sentences and even paragraphs. I'm willing to bet this behaviour stems purely from the (percieved) difference in lag; if you had a chatbox where messages would take longer to appear, people would probably start writing longer messages.

Metafoum - AJAX Forum Software

[glowworm]

I am now using Blursoft's Metaforum [blursoft.com]

It works like phpBB or vBulletin but the active threads page, inside the thread itself and various other places are all built around Ajax so you get the realtime, non-refresh mode.

If someone posts the thread is bumped and everyone knows. In fact if you use FFx and move the forum to a background tab the tab blinks when a new post is there so you can go on with other work and only look when something has happened.

It's still beta but it's now quite usable. Plus... it has Ajax'ed Slashdot style moderation. Members can increase a post above the noise or sink it to oblivion. You set your floor with a fuzzy slider.

There is a working forum at http://www.planetblur.org/beta/index.php [planetblur.org] if you want to look.

Re:It's not the instantaneousness

[scherrey]

Actually Reuter's Messaging has a chat system that is in the same feature space as MindAlign. If you aren't in the financial industry you've probably never heard of it because its commonly sold as an adjunct to their other financial trading/information systems. Because of this financial focus they also have lots of legal compliance capabilities which most non-financial users don't normally ask for but, alas, that's probably soon to pass as well...

Myself? I miss the good ol' days of BIX.