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?"

It's not the instantaneousness

[i kan reed]

It's the rate of buildup. The primary advantage of chatting is that replies are fast enough that they can in turn be replied to quickly, therefor allowing a dialog to made quickly. It's ideal for the "well, what about this" kinds of conversations. Message boards have their primary advantage in thoroughness. When you answer, you try and create complete answers that are useful to everyone reading it and aren't as specific. You do bring up an interesting point though, and it makes me think that it'd be neat to see a wiki that had chat built in. A permenant documentation with quickness in discussion.

Chat logs get you partway there

[dsandler]

Many communities seem to get a lot of mileage out of publishing their chat history (e.g. public IRC logs).

This doesn't really solve the problem of equal participation for peers separated by timezone (or, more to the point, separated by waking hours), but it does address the following killer feature of message boards: searching past discussions for help. Public message boards often serve as organically-growing FAQs; for every question asked and answered, hundreds may get answers without ever having to ask. The same is true of published chat transcripts.

(It works in the corporate setting too: I've personally had good success, in terms of capturing ephemeral knowledge that would otherwise be lost, with behind-the-firewall publication of internal IRC logs.)

Simple is best

[Bones3D_mac]

Instead of straining yourself to figure out how to merge a chatroom with a message board, I'd recommend simply streamlining whatever message board configuration you're using for the fastest post/refresh rate you can get. The faster a user can post and refresh, the more simultaneous user connections your message board will be able to handle at one time.

The ideal way of doing this, is to make it so the user can post and get immediate results within a single mouse-click. Messages should be displayed in a linear fashion using a single page, rather than broken up into pages or nested by reply. A good example of such a setup is theFark.com [fark.com] website. Users can respond as quickly, or as slowly, as they like.

Just remember, any system that makes a user wait too long or makes it difficult for the user to find information will almost always fail in the end.