THE LEGENDARY CHATBOX

Well, recently I've been trying to promote activity on the forum. I've been posting as much as I can, making threads, and I've been doing more than sitting on my butt saying 'the forum is dead' while I do nothing to participate. I want things to change, I want us all to become a community rather than 'a group of people who talk sometimes about sonic ocs'.
I want activity.

And I've come up with one way to try and manipulate it in our favour! See, when we click on the forum, what do we see? We see the chatbox first. And if no-one's on the chatbox, we close the forum.
Don't say you haven't done it. I've done it. We've all done it.
And that's no good.
HOWEVER! If the chatbox is on the bottom of the forum, it would require scrolling down. And scrolling down would mean you'd be looking at the forum before the chatbox. You may see activity. May see something you like. May want to post. And only then, you'll come across the cbox, and you'll see who's online.

So I've conjured up a list of pros and cons for the chatbox either being up and down;

Chatbox top of forum
+Easier access and less of a hassle
+Looks better and makes the forum look less clustered
+It's what we're all used to, and what we've always had
-Potentially stops forum activity by being the main focus
-More likely to ignore forum in favour of the cbox
-If no-one's online, you're gonna bail

Chatbox bottom of forum
+Allows users to see the forum before they leave
+Pushes new members to post before jumping straight onto the cbox
+Stops us from being lazy, and promotes longer activity
-Doesn't look as great and the forum looks a bit more clustered together
-It takes like 1-2 seconds to scroll down (oh no???)
-Change is bad, technology is evil and thomas edison is a witch
-Spekkal is blatantly biased here

SO, VOTE AWAY!
Decisions will be made at some point when we decide most likely! (So basically I have no idea, but I'll keep you updated when I do)

I think you've got a great idea here! I'm totally in favour! Although, it would be great if you could first test of if it becomes a clusterbutt before it actually becomes one!
COME WITH MORE IDEAS YOUR IDEAS ARE AMAZING 10/10

CyanFoxboy wrote:I think you've got a great idea here! I'm totally in favour! Although, it would be great if you could first test of if it becomes a clusterbutt before it actually becomes one!
COME WITH MORE IDEAS YOUR IDEAS ARE AMAZING 10/10

We actually did! It doesn't look that great and I admit it looks better being up top, with the spacing!

I see your view on this and I think you have a thing! Sometimes the ends justify the means, and I believe if we sacrifice some of the forums looks for the activity.. I'm in!

As said on skype, there are two more points I would like to adress.
A cbox at the top means easier access for mods as well so we are there faster if stuff goes down and needs to be fixed.
Second;
The spaceship is also located at the bottom of the screen meaning that if you were at the bottom of the screen and you have spaceship and normal chat open it would clutter the screen.

Why not give it a 'test period'? Then we can look if it is actually has benefits!

CyanFoxboy wrote:Why not give it a 'test period'? Then we can look if it is actually has benefits!

Hilariously enough, we were just talking about that! We're considering doing a test week of the box being at the bottom (if it succeeds with votes), and doing another poll like this after the week is done, just to confirm and get everyone's opinions!

I'd definitely prefer at the bottom personally - especially since it means newer members won't come to the site, immediately see the chatbox and just the chatbox at the top, and go 'Oh, this is a chatbox site for chatbox'.

No one really seems to use the chatbox, so really it's kinda useless (In my opinion, anyway). That is, unless people start to use it as a sort of 'talk with others while waiting' and 'talk about the most random shit' sorta thing.

Personally i love the idea for putting it at the bottom, i am actually guilty of just cheacking who is online and the chatbox then leaving the site for a few hours without looking at my posts so go ahead put it at the bottom, but that is my opinion do what you think would benefit the site the best

Blitz Zhavanx wrote:No one really seems to use the chatbox

I dunno, it's certainly used more than the forum itself.

I've been gone for like 5 billion years, so I'm not entirely sure how much the C-box has been used nowadays. I remember it being used quite a bit though, but most of the time I don't think it's even used for roleplaying.

Because of that, I honestly think we're best off having no C-box at all because it takes away from the whole reason to have a forum and always seems to detract from the whole roleplay focus in the first place.