I am a fan of the site's chat function, but obviously it's not of the highest standard quite yet. I don't know how it's been coded at the moment, but I think using (replacing it with?) an IRC channel has the following advantages:
- Accessibility, as people can join from whatever (IRC-enabled) messenger software they please. Dedicated software will always be better than Web-based chatrooms. Of course, the on-site chat can still be kept in the air, by simply using an applet that connects to the IRC channel. This brings me to the second advantage: - No bugs, as various professionally-developed Web-based IRC clients are available.
Seems to me to have only advantages, both for the visitors and for the coders/admins/mods. Of course it somewhat depends on the audience whether or not the first advantage I mentioned has any significance: how many of us use IRC(-enabled messenger software)?
Perhaps it's something worthy of a poll to see if this would be a desirable alternative.
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- Accessibility, as people can join from whatever (IRC-enabled) messenger software they please. Dedicated software will always be better than Web-based chatrooms. Of course, the on-site chat can still be kept in the air, by simply using an applet that connects to the IRC channel. This brings me to the second advantage:
- No bugs, as various professionally-developed Web-based IRC clients are available.
Seems to me to have only advantages, both for the visitors and for the coders/admins/mods. Of course it somewhat depends on the audience whether or not the first advantage I mentioned has any significance: how many of us use IRC(-enabled messenger software)?
Perhaps it's something worthy of a poll to see if this would be a desirable alternative.