CBoard IRC Channel

Searching through the forums I've discovered that apparently this has been discussed before with varying degress of success or failure throughout the last few years.

I figure there's no reason not to try again and measure the current level of interest.

I understand that the forums are the place to get many coding-related questions answered, but real time communication is beneficial for other reasons.

So, the question for everyone is: If there was an official IRC channel for cboard, would you visit or idle in it at all?

A question specifically for the mods/admins: If there was support for this among the regulars, would there be any other reason that this would be a bad idea?

It wouldn't work, because - even with regulars - only a couple of people are on the board at a time, but these messages stay there, unlike a chat channel.

I'm not referring so much as giving and receiving help, since the forums are more appropriate for that. Some questions are better handled in IRC, but I do think the forums are more appropriate for most of them.

I'd see the channel as more of a place for the regulars to meet and make fun of each other. :)

I think it would be good for asking small questions that don't really deserve a whole thread. Besides, it takes literally no effort to create a channel. And it could be logged.

do it!

I'm not into using chatrooms, so this feature isn't attractive at all to me. However, I can see some pros and cons with it that should be considered.

The biggest pro is the sheer speed. Instead of 5 to 30 minutes (or longer) to get a response to a programming question, it can be available in mere seconds. Another pro is chat rooms are more toward general conversations so instead of threads here, they can be in the chat room instead.

One con is that they can go unmonitored and bad words and other things can go by undetected. There'd have to be at least one moderator on to monitor this. Second, unlike forums, chat rooms conversations are often not saved. There are fixes to this, however, such as having everything archived and have an archive posted (maybe zipped up) when the day is over. Then, another con is, what happens if a user decides to use another user's display name? They'd get confused on who is who (and who knows, one could be playing as the admin even though they are just a regular user). Some measures should be taken to account for this.

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Originally Posted by ulillillia

The biggest pro is the sheer speed. Instead of 5 to 30 minutes (or longer) to get a response to a programming question, it can be available in mere seconds. Another pro is chat rooms are more toward general conversations so instead of threads here, they can be in the chat room instead.

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Considering the complexity of some questions, the time it takes to read, think, code and post an answer should be fairly long anyway. cprog is pretty fast in this regard; but in other places, like newsgroups, people are accustomed to waiting at least a day for any responses. The only way I can really see an irc channel being used is for a place to go when people are bored at work and don't want to do work. If people did ask questions in #cprog, they would most likely get the response, "This channel is not our forum," so it's rather pointless actually. Besides, if the whole idea is to "get together and chat" why does hardly anyone do this regularly in general discussions? We need to use what we have before we make changes.

Not to mention that the format is awkward. The interface to an irc client doesn't really lend itself to people seeking to write the code that answers questions.

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One con is that they can go unmonitored and bad words and other things can go by undetected.

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I'm sure the people here can handle bad words. The problem is finding someone dedicated enough to run irc all day just to see what happens.

> The problem is finding someone dedicated enough to run irc all day just to see what happens.

There'll be someone dedicated enough to run it for about 2 weeks, like there is every time this comes up

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Originally Posted by citizen

Besides, if the whole idea is to "get together and chat" why does hardly anyone do this regularly in general discussions? We need to use what we have before we make changes.

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I take it you've missed every post by Queatrix. :p lol.....

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Originally Posted by citizen

I'm sure those here can handle bad words.

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Ah, but what about a 9-year-old or something and someone using the horrible f-word in the IRC channel? That's one thing that should be considered. For someone of age 20, it's not much of an issue at all, but for even a 12-year-old, it could be. Basic word censors could be used, but then what about replacement of letters to get look-alikes? If "sample" was a bad word, there's $ for the S, then @, c| /-\, etc. for the A, rn (RN), /\/\, ^^ etc. for the M, and more giving dozens of variants. Then of course, there's the characters from 0x80 to 0xFF as well that could also be used further amplifying variations. Just for the "sam" part, there's 192 variants possible (the A having a monstrous 16).

> Ah, but what about a 9-year-old or something and someone using the horrible f-word in the IRC channel?

Yeah that would suck

Wait, they hear that stuff every day at school. An IRC channel is not a parent

Bad words are not a reason to not have an IRC channel. That's just plain stupid. Let's be realistic. If someone has to go off swearing and cursing in a coding channel, they have issues and shouldn't be there.

Let's focus on what the purpose of this would be:

• social place for cboarders.
• place for perhaps simple questions. No, not "fix my homework" questions.

Why don't you just start a channel and see what happens? If there's demand, it'll work. If there isn't, there won't be. I dont' think you need the mods' blessing for this

The "officialness" is what I'm looking for, or perhaps you're right and it is the "mods' blessing". :)

If they put something official, I believe it would be used more. Otherwise if I make a channel, it just carries my name to it, and that's not likely to draw a crowd of professionals.

I think I remember Gabbly being suggested as an alternative before.

There will not be an official cboard IRC channel. If you'd like to start an unoffical one, that is your choice. Since it would be impossible to moderate, an official channel is not possible. As such, we make no claims of responsibility for the content of an unofficial channel.

With great sadness and disappointment, I write this post and thank you for the official answer.

Do I sound depressed enough? :D