New Chat Site?

[JudeSedai]

Mely -- they're talking about the new chat interface, which had an open house this past weekend. Apparently, they don't like what's new and different, to the point of threatening to leave if it's implemented.

Now. I admit that there are some problems with the software, but to be honest, software problems can be overcome. It's the unwillingness of members of the community to overcome those problems in the software that are going to be a problem. Nathan said it elsewhere on the boards, that there are some functionality issues that really, if you look at it, aren't that major. If people looked, I think Mel explained the security concerns as well, up under the support threats in the Community HQ.

I'm probably going to get in trouble with folks for saying all of this, because I'm sure that they won't like that while I honestly do like iChat, I don't think this Java-IRCish thing is as terrible as they make it out to be. Yes, it's clunky. Yes, it lacks some of the functionality. But, like I said, problems like that can be fixed with the application of time and effort. I'm not here because of the chat programs used. I'm here because I like roleplaying with people who know how to do it well, and around here seems to be the largest concentration of folks. That's the community. Not the chat software.

::climbs off the soapbox and looks at Mely:: Sorry if that really didn't answer your question.

 

[Krystal]

I don't suspect anything will be done. And that's all fine and dandy. I understand. But that doesn't mean I won't try to convince people otherwise. There's already been an exodus of sorts on this site before, a few years back.

People will come, people will go, and some will stay. I've been one of the few who've stayed through the multitude of bumps that have been experienced here since around '96. Some of it's been fun, some of it's been far less so. I've walked away, cursed, come back, cursed some more... you get the idea. But honestly, why stay here with your friends when they could just as easily go to yahoo chat and make a private room? Yahoo's just as free, and while it has its own issues... comparitively... I like the feel of yahoo's chat better than this.

The world is a competitive market, and you'd be surprised how quickly word of mouth spreads on the internet.

I already know of a few people who run their own little thing on the side. Does it have moderators? Yes and no. In those rooms, you sometimes have to be your own moderator, using the wonderous /ignore command as appropriate. Sometimes, those who run them are the "mods"... and they don't have the requirement of being fair and impartial as WizOs do. Will we miss new role players? Yes. But there are sure to be others we will meet.

I stand up and say what I say because I feel here my opinions and thoughts mean something. It has constantly been said here that what drives this place is the community. Without us, there is nothing. Yes, people will come here on their own, but it's amazing what word of mouth will do. I myself have brought friends to this site, and I'm not the only one. Maybe people think I'm being too emotional. Maybe people think I'm being unyielding. Maybe I am. But there is a point where you have to put your foot down and say enough is enough. For me, this is such a point.

And to be honest: If you don't stand up and say something when you're bothered/irritated/or otherwise upset with a person or company, how can you expect them to change their ways?

 

[Rune]

Gyah...

As often as I tend to post on the Message Boards (Read: Rarely ever) this was deemed a must as far as things go. I too remember the days of AOL, and when TSR was moved to it's own chat. And not to be cruel to the WizO's, or the designers of this new chat software, but it's terrible. I think I choked back a little bit of vomit when I saw it. I don't think I even need to go into detail of what makes it so terrible, everyone above this response seems to have outlined all the problems quite nicely.

So, since I don't have to outline problems. I'll just say this, this new software has really jumped the shark. Nor do I blame anyone for preparing to abandon ship if this software is really to be the future of the Wizards Chat, concerning us roleplayers.

Well, that's my piece.

 

[Babylon]

I strongly believe that this change is an error that should be halted before it helps to destroy a long standing community.

For once, we actually agree on something . . . First time for everything.

Oh, and Jet: I think that this is the long-awaited software that was supposed to be installed when TMP premiered, the same one announced roughly a year and a half ago. So this is a bit similar to your reference.

I can't name my sources by a promise I made to one, will carry to them all, however. This is the new software that was supposed to premiere with TMP. And has unfortantly not had it's premiere there. It goes back to the ages of the Cantina, when iChat stopped updating.

And as for a walkout, that may not have an effect on Wizards of the Coast executives, but they lost much (all) of my business long ago when their products became less and less balanced and more and more expensive. So patronage of the chat-site and message boards is all the time of mine they receive these days.

Doesn't matter if the walkout changes their minds hon. By posting out complaints and greivances to a public forum. When, and there is no if, this interface bellies up on WotC. The management can't claim a 'No Fault of their Own' based upon the fact that they lacked the knowledge of the problems with the new program.

Essentially we're doing to WotC the same thing that happens to a restuarant when a customer complains. It goes straight into the manager's and the owner's laps.

 

[Dontella]

If the new software, has already been purchased..

For all the comments made here, it will not be changed..

I will give it a chance, when it takes over. One chance, the whole know thy enemy routine.

 

[Kathryn_aka_Kat]

I've tried the new chat, too. There are problems with it, yeah. But I'm with Jude, the biggest problem will be the people leaving.

The problem with a new place is that it cannot be advertised here. This means it will spread by word of mouth and guess what? It will go to "only those people I like to RP with" regardless of the incarnation. This means at best I have to pick which clique I associate with, and at worst means I never find anybody at all.

But I don't want to pick and choose! I want an open site that will also attract totally new players, because some of them are damn good. And that's what I get by using the WotC chat.

So I'll probably stay here. (And yes, I'm still here, and on lots of the time, and you've probably interacted with my new chars)

Oh and someone said they were talking about people using links to a thread here, to hold the descriptions. Though that'll mean opening another browser window and I know some people's computers are cranky and slow with that.

 

[WotC_Mel]

Hello, I am the person I believe many of you want to direct your discontent at.

I don't believe I can address all the various complaints in a systematic matter, so allow me to more generally about how this new chat was selected, why, and the process of its implementation. I don't have expectations to change the minds of those who are dead set against it, but I would like to clear up some misconceptions.

The chat software was purchased over a year ago by Wizards, at a not inconsiderable price. As you might know about software, there are frequently "enterprise" editions of software that are designed to be used by companies/more users than fanpages/individual sites, etc. And along with it is a support cost for individual attention. The reason I bring price up at all, is because companies generally allocate money to things they agree are important. So agreeing to buy the chat and then bring in help to customize its implementation for Wizards, and generally pay for the employees who have to deal with it are all positive indicators that Wizards does care about its community on top of the fact that it pays moderators to host.

[As a side note, a year and a half prior to this, a custom chat client built on a MOO with .NET got as far as the business spec and initial development. However the staff here changed and the project was unfinished, though it had already logged a few hundred hours of code time.]

Replacing iChat was far overdue. The tech behind it is over 6 years old. The company had been bought out by DigiChat so the little support we did have was gone. And the "black box" nature of the registration piece made it impossible to link registration to any other part of the community site. So non-intuitively people have to maintain two separate registrations. I get email from confused wanna-be chatters all the time. Not to mention you can not request a lost password from the system. It has to be reset by a live human. For about 50 per cent of users it was the same for a for a variety of commands like /describe.

Finally, moderation of iChat is a nightmare. While I can't go into details because it would make snerts lives easier, suffice it to say that getting rid of snerts is a chore and a half. iChat had to go, the question was what would replace it.

As with all software purchases, Technical Services makes recommendations as to what would work for them as well as meeting the needs of the "business user" (in this case Online Media--the webteam). IRC was not a option for us as Tech Services does not feel its security issues are reasonable exposures. So the search was constrained by that. Actual business supported chat is similar to message boards software in that there are not a whole lot of choices out there for sale. Digichat and Chatblaster are two of the bigger players. And were we selecting today, maybe one of those two would be the choice. But at the time there were a number of considerations that led to TS recommendation that we go with Chatspace:

a) plays well with main Wizards.com .asp based pages so that chat can be embedded in a webpage
b) integrates with our boards log in so that one screen name can serve in both places. I know this is not a feature for some, but for the vast majority of community users, this is makes sense.
c) can maintain separate instances of the Chatspace such that we could actually try to get a viable chat for Magic chatters going and yet not have them trod on RPG inclined folks.
d) had the nice plus of being able to have the actual client skinned to match a look and feel of the chat type

There were some others too.

I should mention that prior to selecting software, I had asked in numerous quarters--on these very boards--what was the best chat system people were aware of. The only response I ever got was offers from psionics.net to host our chats for us.

Once Tech Services made recommendations, I went put the software through its paces to make sure that it would keep core functionality that iChat had. The bots could be ported over. It could host "event chats." It had all the little things like ignore users, private messaging, and yes, space for descriptions--more on that bit later. Also, About.com used Chatspace in a more visible way back then (it is fairly buried now to get to it) and they had a nice feature that I felt would drive more traffic to chat. It could display how many people were on a given area to a webpage. Such that I could say on D&D main website, "There are X people chatting in-character now. Join them?" and the X would pull out the number dynamically.

Chatspace seemed to be able to do those core items reasonably well and Chatspace support agreed to customize a few unaddressed items. So it was purchased. Since then, Wizards began work on it, the primary tech was headhunted by Microsoft and left, the project was reassigned and work proceeded. Work stalled for a bit when Chatspace put out the next rev of the software and the installation broke the customization work and it had to be reapplied.

Skins were created for four instances of chat (Magic and neutral "moderator skin" are the ones you have not seen). Actually applying the skins was a PITA because Chatspace's documentation for that is inaccurate and there was a lot of back and forth there.

Chat bots were recoded for the new system with input from the WizOs about what the new golem menus would be.

And then about six weeks ago WizOs were introduced to the system and have been getting up to speed on how to moderate with it and document issues that they saw. Some of those issues you have see first hand in open house.

Open house had a few purposes. Obviously guests have a vested interest in seeing what the new chat was going to be before iChat was removed. But it was also to make sure that existing chat users were able to secure their screen name before the chat was made more generally public. And finally, there was the not small matter that there are still issues to work out and a small open house would be a reasonable way to discover what ones would affect guests the most and try and get them addressed prior to "grand opening."

So Chatspace was expected to have some issues. Though certainly some of the things that are making ISRP guests happy are "just the way the software is" and not something that is broken per se some of them are items that can either be cleared up by understanding what is going on or can be asked to be fixed by Chatspace support.

I have to run to a meeting now but I will spend a bit more time on this post to try and say something specific about some of the complaints. Like IP numbers are NOT viewable by other guests. You can see your own address, but not others. It should display simply as XXX.XX.XXX.XXX.

-Mel

 

[Cystuni]

ok... so here it goes... you want it you get it, everyone post your displeasure here. not just complain about how much we hate the software, they don't care. we'll make it real easy for them. and I HIGHLY Suggest a dozen or so more open houses so we can complain further

1> the porting of over 30 screen names and descriptions. give me a way to tie my characters to 1 boards name and tie descriptions to the screen names themsevles, not the board names.

2> having to physically log out of one room to join another. I can't be in two places at once, if i wanted to... I'd use another screen name on another bowser

3> I want a code expert to look over the client and make sign off that it's perfectly safe and secure and no one can hack my PC from ANYTHING or WITH anything involving said program

4>the incredible time it takes to log in... has to be fixed

5> I'm on XP Pro, I don't have a problem, but for those that do, I want that fixed

6>if you're taking away Ichat which we all love, I want private rooms.

7>the /go <room name> thing... works great. if we can't have that. I want a window with all the rooms in them that aren't private so I can point and click.

8>I didn't see a way to customize my text colors for actions, easier that looking for the little action icon.

9> I want a larger chat window, the one on Ichat takes up a sizable portion of my screen, I can see LOTS of info at once.

do these things that I ask I can ve convinced to come back to role-play, do them not and no amount of "saving face" will get me to darken the WotC's website, for anything, ever again. I have my D&D books, I don't NEED anything else. I still play 1st edition and 2nd as well as 3.5. I have more than enough D&D to keep me happy.

 

[Jaya Ballard Balla'th]

6>if you're taking away Ichat which we all love, I want private rooms.

On the same token, I'd like my own mansion. The private room issue has come up often enough - it's a moderation nightmare, and provides ample opportunity for folks to take things out of hand. Sex, drugs, rock & roll, and all that jazz.


On a far less specific note - The software's been purchased, so as Don said, the point is moot. I have enough faith in the mods, Mel, and the folks in charge of this affair, however, that if we can come up with reasonable suggestions to our issues, they'll look into them.

We're getting this change, there's nothing we can do about it, and WotC is not actually obligued to listen to our complaints/suggestions - let alone demands.

So in the meantime, threatening to pack up and leave does nothing but undermine the effort to secure alterations to a battered chat client. Childish temper tantrums and empty threats only cause the 'top' brass to toughen up and do it their way.

 

[Cystuni]

On the same token, I'd like my own mansion. The private room issue has come up often enough - it's a moderation nightmare, and provides ample opportunity for folks to take things out of hand. Sex, drugs, rock & roll, and all that jazz.


On a far less specific note - The software's been purchased, so as Don said, the point is moot. I have enough faith in the mods, Mel, and the folks in charge of this affair, however, that if we can come up with reasonable suggestions to our issues, they'll look into them.

We're getting this change, there's nothing we can do about it, and WotC is not actually obligued to listen to our complaints/suggestions - let alone demands.

So in the meantime, threatening to pack up and leave does nothing but undermine the effort to secure alterations to a battered chat client. Childish temper tantrums and empty threats only cause the 'top' brass to toughen up and do it their way.

it's not a threat, a threat would mean I beleive they care if I leave. second they aren't demends, demands go with threats. they asked what we wanted, I'm telling them what I want. and they apparently DO want to listen to our suggestions, or they wouldn't post on this thread. and putting down someone to make yourself seem superior... lets just say it looks bad. if you want to post something agaisnt this thread, feel free, but I won't call anyone names or insult someone's opinion. please do the same?