TaigaChat vs Chat by Siropu

[Mick]

Hello all.

As I'm sure that most of you who have been in the community for over a month would know, a while ago we tried out a different shoutbox for a little while which was Chat by Siropu instead of the regular TaigaChat that we had been using before that point and are currently using now. When we used Siropu's chat (further called 'Chat' for simplicity), the community disliked it with the mentality of 'if it's not broken, why try to fix it?' and I believe this is no longer the case.

TaigaChat is severely lacking in numerous features that Chat has and the reason that this was never known by the community was because I released the shoutbox before it was fully functional, which is completely my mistake to do out of my eagerness for change. Below is a list of features that Chat has that TaigaChat doesn't, and I hope that you will agree that the pros in this scenario outweigh the cons.

Chat by Siropu:
Pros:
- Custom made chat rooms
- Ability to change where the shoutbox is displayed (facebook-styled, above the forums, sidebar, etc)
- Top chatters list (to see who is the most active in the shoutbox)
- User tagging (which is only available in TaigaChat with an addon)
- Private whispering command
- Kick users from your chat room
- Enable/Disable bbcode buttons (bold, italic, underline, strike-through, image, quote, etc.)
- Incredibly amazing administration and moderation capabilities that allow for automatic unbans after a period, the ability to report shoutbox messages, and more.
- Built-in (and much better) support for shoutbox logs for the staff to review

Cons:
- Takes a little while to get used to
- May be slightly less user-friendly to use the settings panel (as there are more options)

On this thread is also attached a poll, I would really appreciate it if you could vote for your opinion on there and leave a post below about how you would feel about us changing back to Chat once again. (This time it will look good, too!)

Thank you,
Mick

 

[Mick]

I dunno man. The practicalities of this are low, I think.

TaigaChat is lacking several features which are absolutely needed for administration and moderation. There is no way to ban a user from the shoutbox unless they are in the shoutbox or you are able to edit their permissions, you can not give ban reasons, there is no built-in archive, no temp-banning feature, and many other things that are absolutely needed in order for staff to do their job efficiently. Even if we have to disable a few of the features in order for it to be practical, we are willing to do that.

 

[Overlord]

TaigaChat is lacking several features which are absolutely needed for administration and moderation. There is no way to ban a user from the shoutbox unless they are in the shoutbox or you are able to edit their permissions, you can not give ban reasons, there is no built-in archive, no temp-banning feature, and many other things that are absolutely needed in order for staff to do their job efficiently. Even if we have to disable a few of the features in order for it to be practical, we are willing to do that.

I'm aware it's lacking. It's a shoutbox. This site uses it as a trollbox. I mean, you defy some of its purposes.

While Siropu's Chat add-on is much nicer, you want it to substitute as an IM system. One, this is a forum, it's not made to be IM and it's not going to be nice to try and do that. Two, you're going to be increasing forum load HEAVILY to make an IM system with the amount of spam messages that would happen around here. Server load will increase, bandwidths are going to be considerably higher, post counts will see a hit. Thirdly, I'm not sure some of the kids here have the capability to use Siropu's add-on (therefore, it needs a redesign to be more style-appropriate and of course the removal of features).

Add users to a 'banned from shoutbox' group with a 'never' permission to shoutbox and put this button to make the usergroup addition on member cards, is one way around it btw, just to say. I never really thought ban reasons were needed for sectional bans on the site. I mean, shoutbox bans especially, I think people can guess why they're banned.

I mean, don't get me wrong and think I'm supporting one or the other, but this is a lose-lose situation. I don't even support a shoutbox, but since your users love it now as a way to socialise after Verringer added it, it's going to be harder to remove. This isn't a socialising site, it's a Minecraft marketplace site.