A Hybrid Between Chat and Message Boards? 52
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?"
Haha, nope. (Score:1)
Take a squiz at Campfire (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's not the instantaneousness (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:It's not the instantaneousness (Score:4, Interesting)
Mindalign is one of the major IM/collaboration players in the Investment Banking market, and is installed on the desktops of a lot of global banks.
(No, I don't work for Parlano)
-Jar.
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I like where they've taken Mindalign, but I am surprised that there seems to be no other direct competitor out there for this form of collaboration.
-Jar.
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Myself? I miss the good ol' days of BIX.
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Disclaimer: I have a professional interest in this product so consider me biased.
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Why is it when the only tool you have is a hammer you start looking at all problems as if they were nails....?
A Wiki would be a miserable solution for this problem, just like its a miserable solution to just about every other problem.
This problem (to the extent it is a problem) calls out for a common library with a moderated chat room client. Any one of 6 or 8 such programs already exist, skype, Teamspeak, etc. Somebody has to moderat
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Wiki is quite OK for closed groups where inherent "technical" peerness is governed with an organisational hierarchy, it is a sort of indexed, rich-context colaborative message board. Don't confuse the idea "some people infuriate me" with idea "some objects infuriate me", for the latter is insane. So, if you tend to avoid annoying, you shouldn't go to the public places of individual opinion expression, such as internet accessible public Wikis.
Methods of findin
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When you answer, you try and create complete answers that are useful to everyone reading it...
As someone said before, you must be thinking of the other Slashdot.
Already done (Score:2, Funny)
tag boards? (Score:1)
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yes. no. maybe. fud. thinkofthechildren.
LysKOM? (Score:2)
Chat logs get you partway there (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
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I like Slashdot (Score:1)
Slashdot's new comment system (Score:2, Interesting)
When that becomes a reality I expect commenting to take off here like it hasn't before.
Simple is best (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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IRC? (Score:1)
Chat == Forum (Score:3, Informative)
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.
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Even back when IM was first becoming popular, there was a general fuzziness about how "long" messages should be, or what was normal. the first ICQ clients had larger input fields than most IM clients do, and you had to hit alt+s or click the send button to send it (return gave you a new line). As a result, most sent longer messages and that was "normal" because of how the software was designed.
and, haha... when people would send one-line IMs to me on ICQ back then, I'd get really ann
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A private NNTP server would probably be perfect for this guy. Then users could use their favorite client. (or just Outlook Express) They probably already have something installed. Much better than web-crap boards. (Admit it everyone, all web boards have a sucky interface. Even the new "XML improved" ones.) Only thing, I can't remember enough about the protocol to say how fast the server will update clients. It is instantly, isn't it???
Metafoum - AJAX Forum Software (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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One thing I did notice about the metaforum, that I'm not sure I like - listing those who've moderated a comment immediately underneath the comment. I can see the g
Re:Metaforum - AJAX Forum Software (Score:1)
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Matt
what hybrid? (Score:2)
The easy solution... both? (Score:2)
Run a message board during the conference, as well as before and after. Encourage people in the conference (planners, attendees) to post.
Then, have specific "chat times" where someone from the conference is available to chat with others. The purpose of this is to get many interested people involved at once. Nothing is more dull than a chat with four people when you expected forty or four hundred. Afte
ja.zz (Score:1)
There's also a more extensible clone of it used over at Stoofoo [stoofoo.net] (may be NWS).
Usenet news and/or email lists? (Score:1)
Only problem is you'd have to implement a web-interface that translated bb-code to html to get anyone to use the thing these days.
I personally like mailing-lists with archives too -- but I suppose you'd want to opt-in on recieveing the archive for the past x days when you sign up as a new user.
I realize yo
Altme (Score:1)
just an idea (Score:1)
I think the most basic thing you would need is a chat interface with 2 "Send" buttons. One would just transmit a "throw away" line to everyone who is viewing live, and the other would be a "for posterity" button that w
Citadel (Score:2)
keep in mind percieved differences (Score:1)
Keep in mind that generally now, IMs are thought of as more 'disposable', and people write one or two sentence posts (as mentioned above) quite often. in informal discussions, the maj
IRC + forum linked by a bot (Score:1)
FuckedCompany's BBS was practically a hybrid... (Score:1)
php/mysql (Score:2)
You get to see what the previous people said (esp if they were having a conversation) or you can just make notes to everyone about whatever.
it's actually a really small program