IRC

. . . or so I've heard . . . but they're definitely ephemeral! If you want to encourage participation, you need to keep the discussion within the (archived) forum format. That way new members can get up to speed by reading the old posts and become comfortable enough here to offer to help out. It's amazing what kinds of expertise pop up when lurkers register to make a comment, offer informed opinion, point out errors, etc.

IOW . . . can the realtime chat dialogue! Concentrate on building a basis for community parcipitation and severely curtail the chatty/clicque kinda interactions. "Executive Session" b.s. by the board of directors was one of the things that killed NYMUG, don't let that "in crowd" kinda thing take hold here!

Keep the dialogue about improving 'fritter and content development here in this forum so the "minutes" and forum support/policy FAQ accumulate automagically . . . that was the whole point of this new forum after all!

IMHO, of course,
jt

All good points, but I don't see any danger in it. Most real-time chatter is inconsequential, or one-time questions, or just random socializing and getting acquainted. The main focus will always be on the forums themselves, maybe one person in ten will even try IRC, and there's a lot of things that I would talk about that I wouldn't bother to post in public.

I'm not a big fan of scheduled chats (or "events"), but those things (and anything else particularly interesting) can be copied and pasted to the forums at any time. :macos:

When we were using bob-lafleur.net for Applefritter's chat, we had an archive up and running of that. Slightly unofficial granted, but an archive none the less. Would it be possible to set up a similar situation to that on the IRC chats? Perhaps have a special command so that the BlackBox bot would turn off recording if you wanted to say something personal?

Just an idea.

Advertising is required. The IRC chat room needs to be more of a part of Applefritter. And it shoud be better advertised. Perhaps a link to a page giving instructions/info on the IRC chat on the top of the page along with the "Home | Forums ... | Contact" links. Just my 2¢

I think I have it up and running using Snak that is a recommended On this forum.

there were a few of us on about three hours ago. but right now everything seems quiet on the western front.

From what I hear from BDub, It used to be very lively. We really need to encourage more users to join it, as it is nice to have live tech support, should anyone need it. I prob. might use it more if there were more people on it to get answers from. I have left it on, and haven't seen anyone on it yet today. Maybe I am missing the good hours.

EDIT: I happen to be in the chatroom now if anyone is interested

im in there most of the time im at my compuer these days. I think it's beginning to come back to life, slowly.

ok, guess it's not coming back to life, i think weve had as many as 4 people in there in the past 2 weeks, that's about it.

you would think that people would want to have answers right away and be able to get to know the other 'fritters more. It is quite fun and we all have a good time. Plus, we get a lot of answers right away. Please AF member's, Try it. It isn't that hard and if we get a lot of real time chatting going on, we can get answers to people right away that are stuck in tight Situations.

BTW: I think the max we have had at one time was 5

Hey, I'll jump in there. I'm on this thing quite a lot. Let's get the party started, come on in people!

lets get this party going! Join the AF IRC chat!

see this link:

http://www.applefritter.com/node/2602

the irc channel is jumpin' better hurry if you want to get a seat

Yeah, it's getting larger every day.

And in the event of an important question, I log all IRC chats, just in case.

Yes, but verry sloowwly. Really, people, even if you dont have a specific question, duck in and say hello, perhaps you can help someone else with something.

This evening i got this wieird message in IRC:

***: Closing Link: <> (No more connections allowed in your connection class)

Can't seem to get in... need my daily fritter!!

I wonder what's going on?

if you want to chat for the time being, you can join me at coiuspcrepair on Yahoo IM, and if anyone else joins, we can do a conference chat

im getting an ERROR: Connection refused.

What the heck is going on! im suffering 'fritter withdrawl!

come on in

as i said, it's out again. (10.24pm US Eastern)

Nevermind, got in by going through a mirror.

On another note, why not advertise it by mentioning that people can sometimes get instant tech support. I, personally, work in tech support (specalise in hardware), and im a Computer Sciences major in college, so feel free to ask me a question. (my nick is UltimateMacUser1)

I keep getting a note that the server is full

i got that once or twice, did you try going in through a mirror, using the /server command?

If anyone is interested. I just haven't been on much recently. To much work going on, but i will try to be on more often...

it's allways the same 4 or 5 people in there. I, for one, am in there every night, except sundays, when im working.

i just got an excellent idea from pepicool that could save my neck... thx pepi! I have to go do it, but ill be back on within 3 hr's of this post

it's allways the same 4 or 5 people in there. I, for one, am in there every night, except sundays, when im working.

It has to start somewhere.

of course it does.

irc seems to be down again this morning... keep on getting a connection refused error

irc seems to be down again this morning... keep on getting a connection refused error

Are you trying to get onto rizon or freenode? In case you didn't realize, we recently moved #applefritter to irc.freenode.net due to all of the problems rizon has been having.

thanks, i did not realize that a change had happened until i went onto rizon and saw the message in applefritter.

I have been popping in all day and have seen no one but token, but he doesn't respond. I think it is dying down

C'mon people! join the chat revolution!!!

I've been in an out of the house all day. Coius, you should keep in mind that it is the weekend. And I'm not sure how it is where you live, but it is beautiful here. Go out and enjoy yourself. No need to try and bully people into chatting on IRC. It always slows down on the weekend, and always picks up a bit during the week.

ill keep that in mind

What client is recommended?

I recommend X-Chat Aqua
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xchataqua/

for PC, I recommend downloading mozilla (not Firefox) as it has a built-in IRC chat client

I've been chatt9in' for over a decade, and dang-it I'm tired of it! Forums are much easier to keep track of what is going on and a much longer lasting form to keep the info in. When I first started it was chat all the way for me, but i soon learned the incredible value of forums/BBS (esp. web-based ones) IRC is still too disjoint except for whena couple servers decide to share channels. Web forums are the one-stop-shop solution, for me.

I've been chatt9in' for over a decade, and dang-it I'm tired of it! Forums are much easier to keep track of what is going on and a much longer lasting form to keep the info in. When I first started it was chat all the way for me, but i soon learned the incredible value of forums/BBS (esp. web-based ones) IRC is still too disjoint except for whena couple servers decide to share channels. Web forums are the one-stop-shop solution, for me. :)

I don't believe that anyone is advocating dropping the forums in favor of IRC. It is just a supplemental means of communicating about the topics 'fritterers enjoy talking about. Live chat is also beneficial when you have a crisis on your hands. Nothing worse then being desperate for some help and having to wait for a reply to a post. I happen to like both means of communication.

I wasnt' really going the route of IRC replacing the fora, just commenting on my longterm experience. Live chat si good for those situations, but for over 99.99% of the problems I encounter, Google and many forums make things better. Of course there comes a time when nobody has had that problem, or it was long enough ago that it never made it on to the web... I still need drivers for my Tecmar Macdrive to use on my 512k, for example.