Chat Room?

I agree with PinkAngel. Aren't you suppose to be quiet in a Library?


What's a psanko site? Is that a site for spankos with dyslexia?

As to chat space; I vote 'Nay'! There are other venues and medias you can use. And as many of us know you can hook up with other regulars on you own. This is a LIBRARY not a chat box. Grin!

I'm going to go against the flow here. I'd love a chat room. It would be lovely to actually have a one on one talk to people here, where we're not constrained by the limitations of Yahoo or something similar.

Funny but I just sent a message off to management requesting a chatroom and here it's already being discussed. If a chatroom is able to be set up, and doesn't cost money for the site owner, I think it would be a good idea. I mean it's like this, some people would like it while others wouldn't, at least it would be nice to have the option. Granted there might be chatrooms on other sites, but I have yet to find one that deals with spanking.

All I want to say is no no no no no NO!



Me thinks Miss TB is gonna be very busy AND she has to deal with Blimp too!!

You know I've never really entertained the idea of a chat room because on most sites devoted to TTWD I didn't have anything to chat about. I don't want to hook up or do whatever it is people do in chat rooms, but for this site, I've actually thought it might be a good thing because it's devoted to storytelling and writing exclusively. I'll just say this--I'm not lobbying for it, but if it were here I'd definitely use it. Being able to carry on discussions in real time would be great I think. So I'm kinda with Seegee on this.

I'll qualify this by admitting I have no clue as to technical difficulty and other science facts re setting it up and if His Februsness says it's impractical, a pain, whatever, so be it.

Thanks Rollin. Chat rooms can serve many functions, but what they talk about tend to be driven by what the members of the site want. I belonged to another story writing site some years ago and as most of us were writers that's what we spoke about.

I've been to several spanking sites with chatrooms, and they universally devolved into being the ego pad of a few lifeless individuals playing weird head games with each other.

HOWEVER, since this is specifically a spanking writers' site, I could see a chatroom being productive as a way to discuss ideas and bounce criticism on works in progress.

I'd been holding off from commenting about the possibility of a chat room in order to give people a chance to say what they thought but also because there's isn't just one simple answer.

From a technical point of view there are a whole range of ways a chat room facility could be provided. Without going into detail some of these will place an unacceptable load on the shared sever we run on. As it stands we are already a very demanding site in terms of server resources, using 27 database tables, a number of which are accessed and updated constantly. Adding chat room software which ran on our own server is almost certain to push us onto the next level of hosting with a large monthly price hike which we're not going to pay for. There are, however, other options which I can take a look at.

Another issue we'd have to consider is that of focus. The LSF has been designed specifically to focus on spanking fiction and we've so far resisted any attempt to bolt on distractions. Personally, I'd hate the site to become like the current version of SIN. We do have a forum but it was chosen on the basis of being simple and minimalistic in terms of functionality, as forums have a habit of taking over sites in my experience.

Perhaps my greatest concern is the amount of drama that chat rooms tend to generate and the subsequent time and effort required to moderate them. Speaking again from past experience, having run sites that featured a chat room, I reckon hardly a week went by where there wasn't some major disagreement, attention seeking drama, complaint from women that they were constantly being hit on and so forth. So, if we were to consider having a chat room, then it needs to be stated up front that we're not going to have the time or inclination to moderate it or deal with fallouts arising from the use of it. Consequently, I'd say it would be highly unlikely that it would be open to the whole membership, one possibility might be authors and selected non-authors I suppose?

So, all in all, for now at least, it'll have to remain something to think about for the future.