A Shouty Experiment

Nicolas King

"I am the hero who eats the lesser man..."
 
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Nick
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Curly Oak/Wenge 16" Essence of Feng-huang Tail Feather
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When we moved to Xenforo, we decided to install a fully featured chatroom instead of just a shoutbox but to treat it like the familiar shouty we all knew and loved. This gave us some extra features for staff that we thought would be useful, and the possibility to change how we use the feature in the future. Recently, we've decided it's worth the experiment of opening shouty up to more possible uses.

What new features will you now be able to try out?
  • Private Messages
    You can send private chat room messages to other users! Perhaps it's something quick, or silly, or not needing a whole conversation thread - just send them a quick direct chat!
  • Create new chat rooms
    Maybe you've always wanted a room where you can chat about what you had for lunch and thought such light fare didn't need its own topic, or you wanted its history to be as ephemeral as possible - why not create your own chat room?
    Perhaps you'd like to coordinate a roleplay topic with a bunch of people and find conversations to be onerous in how they don't refresh instantly - why not make a private chat room with only those roleplayers involved in the topic invited to join? (Noting, of course, that like anything on the board - inappropriate content can be reported and then moderated.)
    Perhaps you just want to chat with your friends on the community about something going on in your life that doesn't need to be shared in the main shouty room - well, now you can do that too!

As said in the title, this is an experiment - we don't know if these features will be useful or distracting, if they'll encourage more activity on the board or less - so we want to trial it, see what new and creative ideas you come up with (often we find features get used in ways we don't expect!), and what that means for our community. We'll be consistently evaluating how it's going, and if we decide to end the experiment and revert the changes we'll give you a couple of weeks' heads up - and if these changes become permanent, we'll share that in a future Bi-Weekly Update!

One final note on the shoutbox - the best place to ask questions about the board is the FAQ forum. This is not only because it will likely get you higher quality answers than posting in the shoutbox, but also because your question might help future users find their way on the site, as well! :)

We're excited to see how this experiment goes, and hope you enjoy testing out the newly enabled features!
 
This looks amazing and I'm really excited (and already a fan without trying it out tbh)

But I noticed that on some of my characters I can see a list of online members at the side of shouty and on others I still see the old shouty, though I did notice I can create rooms. Is this a setting I have to change? Or am I being impatient :p
 
But I noticed that on some of my characters I can see a list of online members at the side of shouty and on others I still see the old shouty, though I did notice I can create rooms.
Great question!
This is likely because on some of your accounts you've changed shouty's default settings for yourself.
On those accounts, you should just need to click the gear icon and then make sure "hide chatters list" isn't checked!
Screen Shot 2021-01-29 at 12.48.57.png
 
Great question!
This is likely because on some of your accounts you've changed shouty's default settings for yourself.
On those accounts, you should just need to click the gear icon and then make sure "hide chatters list" isn't checked!
View attachment 1519
Yup that'd be it, I completely forgot there were separate shouty settings.

Thanks!
 
This sounds like something fun! I'm curious to use it and I think it's nice to try new stuff, and see where it goes! Thanks Nick!
 
Another question hi

Can you make a room that's open for people to join like the spotlight room is, or can you only make them if you invite people? I'd make one to try it out but I don't really have a purpose for it besides wanting to know atm :p
 
Can you make a room that's open for people to join like the spotlight room is, or can you only make them if you invite people?
Definitely you can make new public rooms that are open for people to join!
This is what I meant by:
Maybe you've always wanted a room where you can chat about what you had for lunch and thought such light fare didn't need its own topic, or you wanted its history to be as ephemeral as possible - why not create your own chat room?

Sorry that wasn't clear! :)
 
Definitely you can make new public rooms that are open for people to join!
This is what I meant by:


Sorry that wasn't clear! :)
Yeah I thought so from your description but I was added to a private one that doesn't show up for my other chars, so I wondered. I guess the password makes the difference?

Apologies for all the questions I'm very curious :p
 
I guess the password makes the difference?
Actually, there are two kinds of private rooms.

One is only for certain users. When you create a room and add users to the "Room users" list, those are the only users that will be in that room and the only ones who can see it (other than admin who can break in as necessary). The person who made the room should be able to add more to the list as they want to.

The other is a password protected room that everybody will see in the room list but won't be able to join without the password. (Again, apart from admin who can break in as needed. :) )
 
We'll put a GM on making a shouty FAQ if the changes stick around. For now, curious questions can be answered here. :r
 
Oohh this is awesome!! The new chatroom really made on-site messaging a lot more convenient and exciting, so I'm very excited to jump into some new rooms ^_^

Can the new rooms be used for things like a live narration of exciting RPs that are happening? Or a sort of general character discussion / plotting chat? I really need both of those in my life :teehee: but I know there is a plot development forum for the purpose of the latter. It's just so fun to generate plot ideas from live conversations about random things sometimes.

Thank you for trialling this! :party:
 
Can the new rooms be used for things like a live narration of exciting RPs that are happening?
Make the rooms you want to use, I think! That's the point of the experiment, at least. ^_^
 
I was wondering about the new look... I think it's brilliant thank you for sharing this!
 
Think I've encountered a small glitch. I switched accounts while looking at a private chat on another account (Connor) and now I can see that chat on Ainsley's account and it keeps notifying me that she has a new private chat, but not showing me one. Connor's chat isn't in Ainsley's list and it disappears if I swap chats, but refreshing the page brought me back to it. I took a screenshot of what Ainsley's chats look like when I refresh the page.

YSmkr1U.png


basically be careful while swapping accounts i guess? (the 1 under private chats isn't showing up in the screenshot but it comes back when i refresh)
 
basically be careful while swapping accounts i guess?
If you click a new private chat in the sidebar you should no longer see the private chat from the old account, even after a refresh (I just tested :) ).
 
It was definitely coming back when I swapped chats on Ainsley's account, but switching Connor back to regular shouty seems to have fixed it 🤷‍♂️
 

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