Add a shoutbox to yesterweb.org

[tactical-waffle]

I honestly think adding a shoutbox would be cool af because its like, more oriented to conversations then forums if yk what i mean, i totally do understand why the discord is going into read only but i think it would be cool to have something that fills the same niche but like not as the premier way to interact with the community.

I'll be completely honest this could be the stupidest thing i've ever suggested and please set me straight if it is, but in a few other instances of massive forums with shoutboxes they have been polite(well as polite as the larger community which might have thrown off those other examples cause they were, fascinating) places that don't have insane amounts of noise but do offer a way to have a more real time conversation if that's what someone is seeking.

[Serah]

Could be fun! A forum I helped run in the late 2000s had a real-time chat embedded at the bottom of the page and it was definitely a great way for the community to have more casual real-time conversations. A few other forums I frequented had links to real-time chatrooms, too.

The only issue I can see is if the forum ends up even half as big as the Discord then that chatbox could easily start to become unmanageable, especially if people's chatbox and forum accounts are different.

[Starfighter]

Judging by the chatboxes I've seen on other forums over the years they're seldom as busy as one would think, at least not to an uncontrollable degree.

[Serah]

Yeah, they weren't constantly active in the forums I was on but the forums I was on were also nowhere near as big as the Yesterweb Discord! A couple of hundred members with a few dozen who were truly active.

Still, I think it's a good idea: certainly worth trying at least.

[Sadness]

I hear where you are coming from on this and it's something that I considered for a bit, because I've seen forums that have chatboxes.

Here's my reasoning for saying no, or at least, "not right now":

Part of the decision to retire the Discord server and move over to this forum is because it's a lot of moderation work and effort moderating any kind of realtime chat space. While it can be argued that chat/shoutboxes are much smaller and have an ephemeral history, I've had one on my website since its inception and I've seen firsthand how easily it can be co-opted by bad actors, using the space to post slurs/hate speech and spam. Something like that needs to be monitored 24/7 for this very reason.

All of that said, I'm not closing out/locking/deleting this suggestion (I highly encourage forum suggestions!) maybe at some point in the future things will change but right now, we're not looking to add a chatbox.