Chat threads

Starting to feel like I used to when I walked into mums and tots when the cliquey mums would glare and me and not talk. [goes to sulk in corner]

I actually joined MN because I had heard it would be a friendly welcoming place - I'm starting to wonder now.

prufrock lol

very happy with the no chat version of active convos - thanks very much mumsnet!

Does this new development mean it IS possible to have an ignore button?

Oh - and the point of my analogy - Ithink a chatroom would amke Mumsnet a bit like the centre of Nottingham used to be - lots of big noisy pubs full of people - one for the goths, one for the rockers, another for the "townies" another for the uni geeks. And as I had friends in all those camps I had to buy a lot of different clothes and go outside a lot.

SeaShells

I think you would have liked it in the 'good old days' too!

I'm one of the horrible stupid newbies who crashed the dinner party too.

I'm inclined to agree with SS here - a lot of these posts do sound rather like that -

Perhaps we'd better stop any references to MN in the media incase we get any more people joiing us!

I'm rather offended by the suggestion that MN has changed for the worse since chat appeared and the user numbers increased!

I'm pretty new here, I came along way after the chat section appeared, sorry if I've invaded 'your' site! That's how I feel!
I'm sick to death of people saying that MN was better in 'the good old days' and 'it's getting worse here'

The site is becoming more sucsessful and evolving, get over it!

but the site has become more like a huge pub full of people rather than the lovely little civilised dinner party it used to be

You mean it used to be cliquey and now is open to everyone - oh what a shame

To echo ks, my fears about chat were proved true. (Although I do agree that the site had changed prior to its introduction - hence its introduction)

The level of debate has got much less intelligent a lot of the time - not that I think the "new" users are less intelligent, but the site has become more like a huge pub full of people rather than the lovely little civilised dinner party it used to be. It's also impossible to really get to know people as you used to be able to - all the mumsnetters I "know" off Mumsnet are pre-chat people or people from my May babies group, and I do think there are many others who I would realy like if given the chance to remember them.

But as I said - this is just my opinion, and whilst I would love J,c and R to take it into account, I don't think it's any more valid or valuable than anyone elses.

I don't recall anyone saying 'your argument is crap' =

Of course problems can occur - no-one is denying that - but IME you'll find no more problems on 'chatroom' that you'll find on the forums!

What worries me is not cliquyness in the chat rooms: I won't be in there - it's cliqueyness spilling over into the forum...

no don't do it, we're doomed, doomed I say

If you think its going to be cliquey then we can have 20 different rooms, one for each little unit, and it can just be like mum's and tots with the little groups sat round the room! [happy sarcastic emoticon]

The cliqueyness is the big thing that bothers me.

This is probably not very logical, but my gutfeel is that chat allows little gangs to form that feel quite 'closed' to outsiders.

It's happened with the 'chat' threads (and I'm old enough to remember MN before that) and while I'm not that bothered - thick skinned, me - I know it is the very thing that crops up again and again in posts about RL mothers groups.

Chat rooms exclude:

1. those of us who can't get at MN for certain times of the day
2. those of us who don't type very fast
3. those of us who don't want to use MN for a 'chat' but for information

That's my best effort at explaining why the idea makes me uncomfortable.

I'm all for a trial run... If things start changing too drasically then take it away again! I don't see the harm in trying it out.

Looking at the reasoned arguments against, makes me lean towards a no. Although i do think that in the name of democracy a trial should at least be offered if so many MNers want it.

Go georgie
Go georgie
Go georgie

NdP: the perils of being ill with too much time on my hands

Another downfall of having separate rooms is that can encourage cliquiness and can cause fallouts.

Dh reckons (just been talking to him about it) that in general the limit is about 20 people actively chatting in a "room" before it becomes unworkable and confusing.

WOW ! Go you G Never seen you het up before

Right sorry, calmed down a bit more. Back to more appropriate potential pitfalls for mumsnet to think about and work around.

Are you going to have separate rooms within the chatroom - chatrooms with lots of people in get very difficult to parse - more than 3 conversations ongoing at once and it's very easy to get lost. Of course, the issue with several rooms is that you then have to have moderators for each room.

Are you going to allow private messaging within the chat? Again can be very useful to send someone a "tell" (but also can be embarrassing if you mistype and the tell goes to the whole room!) - again you have issues over abusive messages in "private". They cannot be moderated so easily.

Should I also put more info into the pot and declare that my dh also is responsible (i.e. wrote and integrated and is responsible for what goes on in) a chatroom on a private site of around 500 users (so small) and I have experience of the hassles that can come up - and that's with all people registered who have no opportunities to change their names!

Okay, it doesn't crop up that often with a group that small, but it does happen - and mumsnet is bigger and you can obscure your identity. I don't think it's a trivial issue and I'm not just saying no for the sake of being a party pooper.

In fact, all this "your argument is just crap" stuff is just making me all the more resolved that it's a bad idea - whereas before I'd have quite happily shrugged and said that I'd reservations but whatever...

and as I 'write' that particular forum has 89 users online, (out of almost 90,000 registered users!) and no-one in the chatroom.

but why are you so sure that it would change it so abrutply?

FWIW I 'arrived' here after the chat boards were introduced - they're already in MASS use when I came and for me that's what helped me to stay - I like the feel of it.

I know of one website whose chatroom is used relatively infrequently - yet has 1000's of posts made each day - once in a while there'll be a 'mass gathering' in there but it certainly DOESN'T affect the boards in any shape or form.