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13 hours ago, citrus# said:

Maybe we could use discord?

Its a good tool to use for communication (https://discordapp.com/). It just need some setting up and people can join or invited in. It combines usually teamspeak and forum chats and its a real-time solution.

 

C#

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How hard can it be to build our own version of the chat? @Eagle_cz

17 hours ago, citrus# said:

Maybe we could use discord?

I don't think discord can be integrated into the site, and that is a requirement if we are going to choose a replacement for the old chat

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3 minutes ago, miraro3 said:

How hard can it be to build our own version of the chat? @Eagle_cz

I don't think discord can be integrated into the site, and that is a requirement if we are going to choose a replacement for the old chat

already wrote PM to Craig, waiting for his reply ...

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Mr is away I think so he might not reply right away.

There's also things we can look at like copying what other board users have replaced chat with. We just need to see which option gives us what we want and how difficult it might be to add to the forums. We can also open up the admin shoutbox to everyone but I'd rather not do that. I need somewhere to have my drunken rants hehe.

Does everyone want chat back? I mean it hasn't been used all that often lately anyway.

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3 hours ago, Charlie said:

Does everyone want chat back? I mean it hasn't been used all that often lately anyway.

I was in there few times when I came here and when I was on trial. Almost empty majority of those times. Thats why I proposed discord. Maybe people can chat each other more then also? At least I would like to do that. Because when Im in game, Im usually focused on game and not on chat. Teamspeak is an exception - thats a cool way to socialize. Discord for me is a good place for people to chat, to ask whatever questions they ask and such. I use that for multiple mulitplayer games I play (I think im in 3 ET discord channels atm) and I even use that at work.

 

4 hours ago, miraro3 said:

How hard can it be to build our own version of the chat? @Eagle_cz

I don't think discord can be integrated into the site, and that is a requirement if we are going to choose a replacement for the old chat

 

Didnt had that in mind. I was wondering - maybe to move chat and some communication there?

 

C#

 

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Well, the main thing about the chat on site is that it is supposed to increase site activity because it gives people a reason to visit this site. There are indeed a lot of out-of-site activities but using those as a replacement will not do the forum activity any good.

The reason chat was empty lately is most likely because there isn't much effort going into keeping the chat active either. We had @MadF.Lame who did a great job for a long while to be in chat almost all the time every day and during those times we had a decent chat activity. Since he has no time for it anymore and since nobody has picked up after him most people will just leave chat if they notice that it's empty. It works kinda the same way like our servers -> people bring people.

So dear admins, I strongly suggest to find an alternative that we can use internally here.

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There are certain PHP forum chat pre-builds that you can use, maybe temporarily while you search for a solution.

I liked chat, liked to AFK in it but to be fair it was empty most of the time.

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1 hour ago, MrMuppet said:

https://rocket.chat  this can be integrated as mentioned in the topic, we are currently away on holiday so it will be the end of next week before I can look at anything, perhaps open the chat box to all in the short term?

 

Do you mean the shout box?

Since there's a lot of sensitive information in that one it might be worth looking into if we can somehow have two of those running at the same time, with different access restrictions.

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  • Founders

We can delete all the history of the chat box and open it up to all forum members, we can also add this as a menu tab and allow it to open in a pop lick the original chat. I tried a shout box to run alongside the chat box but it won't post correctly.

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On 2017-5-11 at 3:44 PM, MrMuppet said:

We can delete all the history of the chat box and open it up to all forum members, we can also add this as a menu tab and allow it to open in a pop lick the original chat. I tried a shout box to run alongside the chat box but it won't post correctly.

In that case we can consider it as a temporary solution.

Emphasis on the temporary :D 

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 hour ago, miraro3 said:

So we're not going to try to improve the look & feel of this thing a little bit?

U mad?

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4 hours ago, miraro3 said:

So we're not going to try to improve the look & feel of this thing a little bit?

Not at this moment in time.

As said to Charlie, I reviewed the chat room access at its closure and it only average one person when in use so my time+effort over gain is minimal. I have considered the plus version for IPB integration but even at only $35 unless I see some usage then I'm not wasting any more money on resources that are just not used, so if someone wishes to purchase this and send me the software then I will get it installed by next weekend.

There seems to be a consensus that when something needs doing I have to complete this immediately, frustratingly when ever I ask for something simple such as "have you tested the server for the event" or "can you check this on the forums" them people don't spend five minutes of their time in doing so but I'm expected to spend hours trolling sites for chat software, installing, testing and removing until I find something half decent.

So, what actually is wrong with this and what improvements are needed?

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Review your messages and take on board what people have to offer or request. A fix was found without you needing to do anything other than offer the correct permissions and resources to carry on with the job, but you implemented something anyway and moan about doing it. No-one wants to incur extra financial costs. It was about 3 weeks ago IPS stopped doing the chat room and it should have been sorted long ago with the progress people made, it just needed some cooperation between yourself and others. So yeah people lost patience. Don't get me wrong though, everyone still appreciates what you give to TM but it would be even more unsuitable for me to comment further. Myself and the admin team do the best we can with what we have and what is required by everyone. We're not the most technically gifted lot but we give it our best for everything needed.

 

I suppose it's distasteful for me to make this post as it is in the public eyes, but I just don't ... care ... about certain things any more.

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Eagle pm'd me on the 9th of May which was the day we left for Marbella, we returned home, had one day off and then returned to work on 12hr nights until Wednesday morning, we installed a chat on Friday after your pm.

Nobody requires access to this sites database to run a chat room, the chat installed is a standalone and separate to this site using its own database as .eu is locked, if someone wishes to have the api key for the chat then they can have that but this is not going to be linked to the .eu database for security reasons, end of.

So back to my question, what actually is wrong with this and what improvements are needed?

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2 hours ago, MrMuppet said:

Not at this moment in time.

As said to Charlie, I reviewed the chat room access at its closure and it only average one person when in use so my time+effort over gain is minimal. I have considered the plus version for IPB integration but even at only $35 unless I see some usage then I'm not wasting any more money on resources that are just not used, so if someone wishes to purchase this and send me the software then I will get it installed by next weekend.

There seems to be a consensus that when something needs doing I have to complete this immediately, frustratingly when ever I ask for something simple such as "have you tested the server for the event" or "can you check this on the forums" them people don't spend five minutes of their time in doing so but I'm expected to spend hours trolling sites for chat software, installing, testing and removing until I find something half decent.

So, what actually is wrong with this and what improvements are needed?

Craig I have always looked up to you and respected you so the last thing I want is to start a fight. This response is not meant to attack you in any way. I hope you understand that before reading further.

I don't agree that there is a consensus that you have to do everything immediately when something needs doing. What I would agree with is that there are some tasks that simply should be done as soon as possible with the best interests of this community in mind. We have an admin team in place with an ambitious new leader who are more than willing to do these tasks for you but the problem is that even Charlie doesn't have complete access to the services needed to do these tasks for you.

You are our founder, the one who has been so generous to invest so much time and money in a community that we have all loved for so many years. If, after all these years, you do not feel like putting the same amount of time into this than nobody will blame you for it. You have done your fair bit and it has been an amazing carreer. But please, let the others do the work for you then so that we can continue what you have started and maybe improve some things here and there along the way.

I also don't agree that this community of people never do what you ask them to do. There have been many people in TM, some aren't anymore but a lot still are, that have been willing to put a lot of work in. Some of these people have been overlooked and some of these people just never were asked to help out when and where needed. Just look at Eagle who has spent an unhealthy amount of hours tinkering around in here. If anything, the wrong people were asked to do things at the wrong moment in time or just lost their motiviation to do things for whatever reasons they might have had.

I feel like, for reasons unknown, that you are only seeing the negative side of the community at the moment. I don't know what happened and I since we never had a conversation on a deep personal live I don't expect you to tell me right here and now. But, I hope from the bottom of my heart that whatever is going on with you right now will pass over sooner than later. I hate to see you like this compared to the times when you seemed to enjoy yourself.

If it's real life related you can take some time of to sort things out, all of us will understand. Just pass the keys to the kingdom to the admin team so that we don't have to send you PM's all day and all night for things that may appear to be trivial to you. All of us would be more than happy to annoy Charlie with that.

If everything is fine outside of TM, then I beg you to be open with us and have a conversation with us to let us know what exactly is going on. There might be so much more things annoying you than we know of. And if that is the case we should know about it and try to find solutions for it as a team. Never has a solution for a problem been found without decent communication.

Edited by miraro3
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4 minutes ago, MrMuppet said:

Eagle pm'd me on the 9th of May which was the day we left for Marbella, we returned home, had one day off and then returned to work on 12hr nights until Wednesday morning, we installed a chat on Friday after your pm.

Nobody requires access to this sites database to run a chat room, the chat installed is a standalone and separate to this site using its own database as .eu is locked, if someone wishes to have the api key for the chat then they can have that but this is not going to be linked to the .eu database for security reasons, end of.

So back to my question, what actually is wrong with this and what improvements are needed?

The chat being standalone is one problem because it pulls the user out of the "forum environment". That's easily fixed by just embedding the external page into a normal forum page, as I've already done. We, being both Charlie and myself, lack the permissions in the ACP to hide the "chat room" button in the main navigation and replace it with the "chat" button which is now hidden as a sub-item of the portal button. (The former page should keep existing, it should just not be visible in the navigation anymore, since that page is being embedding in the latter page)

Another problem with the chat is the fact that the user needs to sign in before being able to use the chatroom. This is an extra step that bring accessability and user experience down by quite a bit since they already had to sign in to the forum to be able to use the chat room in the first place. The database access was to help make the connection between the chat and the forum. Althought I believe that we can find other solutions for this because as your said, direct DB access should be a last resort because of security reasons.

Next is the look of the chat room which is a design that probably originates from somewhere around 2007-2010 I'd say. It works but it's not appealing and the controlls are rather bulky and distracting. We can fix this, no problem.

The history of the chat should be removed together with the censorship. One of the beauties of the old chat was that you could say what you want when you wanted it without having to worry about anyone reading what you said at any point in the future. This encourages open discussions and deeper social connections.

I would love to take a look at the API for the chat client and see what I can do with it to make some improvements. Of course in a team effort with Charlie and the others.

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2 hours ago, MrMuppet said:

Menu tab done, password emailed.

Thank you, I will look into it.

One last request. Can the chat button be moved two places down the navigation? I think it makes more sense to have portal and forum before chat.

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