Would it be worth having a chat room for emergency's

[Dave 54]

Val came up with an idea the other night that may help people in an emergency situation hen it comes down to koi or goldfish health, I pointed out that we can PM each other but she said no more for person to person real time talking .
She feels that in some cases it may very well be the difference between this world and the next for some of the fish.
Looking at it that way I really must agree it may well have its uses but then its how its manned and by who because we have major time zone differences around the world perhaps the logistics are just too much especially in the vastness of the US/Canada and their many time zones.
Here in Europe it would be an easier concept as there is only an hour or two difference.
Perhaps this is one for the Administrators to take a look into discuss and then come back with their findings ?
What does everyone think to her idea would that speed of an answer on a face to face basis save the lives of our pets is it just too much to ask members to do in manning the chatroom and how would you work out a rota ?
The members chosen would have to have a very good working knowlege of fish health issues would we be open the cost of the fish if it died after advice was given .
The more I think into this the more issues seem to surface but I still think Val is onto something

Dave

 

[Catfishnut]

Dave and Val,

Actually, I have been involved with other forums (some of my other hobbies like FTA satellite TV) where the forum sponsored a live chat group or arena. It was a swell idea, I thought, it was fun. But the participation was weak and it was a great demand on the forum administrators and moderators. Being LIVE someone had to monitor "all the little children" for proper speech use, proper language and in general, just to ensure that all the kids were playing nicely together. LOL

Personally I thought it was a great thing, but there was always some bad egg who was either in a bad mood or was a member of the monkey wrench gang who would mess is all up and piss someone or everyone off on purpose.

There is a really unique atmosphere which is developed when you go "LIVE". Personally I would like it very much and it doesn't have to be for just emergencies, it can be just a really nice niche for all of our members to have a live "party line". I think that I would join in with everyone in such a chat room, if it were feasible.

On another chord, we might also need to develop an "Emergency room for chats" LOL.

Gordy

 

[addy1]

I met my honey in a family chat room. IF the members could play nice it would be great. But even in that chat room there was a lot of bickering, etc that would go on as fat heads would enter and throw their weight around.
They had 4 moderators for each chat room to try and control the crowd, the room was limited to 25 peeps at a time.

 

[Dave 54]

Yes but we dont have many fat head incidents on this site as far as I can see addy, I'm sure that it could be made to work membership to this site would have to be a must.
Any incidents would be awarded as demerits , so many demerits sin bins them to the website only then repeated offences would say see a total ban from the chat room permanentally of that person.
If the present day site moderators dont want to do the job then a moderator from each of our different forms of fish keeping would have to be chosen that would have to include bog filter experts pond construction experts etc etc
This is Val at her bsest folks "thinking on her feet" so to speak


Dave ad Val

 

[addy1]

Agree Dave most here play real nice together.

Chat rooms are nice, but if you are the "expert" of that room would there be times it would be open so you could be around or just check in when you can. Chat rooms will consume your day. I learned that while in the chat room, next thing you know 4-5 hours have poofed away. If you are not watching the flow of the chat, a lot can be missed i.e. ??'s answers etc.

I had a blast in the chat room, still "know" a bunch from it, but I don't go in anymore, not enough minutes in the day.

 

[Dave 54]

Agree Dave most here play real nice together.

Chat rooms are nice, but if you are the "expert" of that room would there be times it would be open so you could be around or just check in when you can. Chat rooms will consume your day. I learned that while in the chat room, next thing you know 4-5 hours have poofed away. If you are not watching the flow of the chat, a lot can be missed i.e. ??'s answers etc.

I had a blast in the chat room, still "know" a bunch from it, but I don't go in anymore, not enough minutes in the day.

Lol addy KKU used to totally take 6 hours of my time daily twice pushing me to near breakdown on two seperate occaisions not from members answers but just making sure there was no swearing infighting etc and keeping the ideas flowing.
I only ever had to ban two people one who was racist towards my fore fathers "many of who met their end alongside the Jewish peoples of Europe, Gays, German Political prisoners and Russian peoples in Nazi concentration camps".
The other who was basically totally trouble on the sites she was on taking hours of peoples time and dedication to their answers and throwing it in their faces or using peoples work and photo's without their express permission .
Strange thing was she was a senior member on a very well known koi site who I wont mention , the woman in rapid succession found herself banned from three sites within a month for her offences but on the site she was a senior member on she was as well behaved as you or I , to this day we think of her as an agent provocater on the one site that still remains
KKU did get a good reputation as a very freindly but no noncence site so sad funding ran out when its owner ran into financial difficultys stuck in the Dominican Republic unable to free up cash to get him home to the UK

Dave

 

[Sunshine]

We had a chat room on a saltwater site I was on. It was for friendly chat and emergencies. You could see from the home page how many were in there. It was fun.

 

[dieselplower]

It would be fun. Does it add expense? Maybe it could be funded by members paying a small monthly amount to enter? This could get new members with an emergency quick access for only a small fee. Bad behavior could mean forfeiture of that months fee or no option to renew. Just throwing out some ideas.

 

[slakker]

Another idea is a closed (or open) Facebook group. I participate in other forums and meetups where there's an associated FB group. The benefit of that is the it's linked to all smartphones, tablets, etc. with notifications and may be a bit easier for people on the go to see someone's post live and quickly respond or help.

But similar challenges can pop up with "baby-sitting" hence making it closed may help a bit... in that users must be approved by the admin of the group first so not just anyone can join.

 

[adavisus]

Yup facebook has an instant message feature which can accommodate groups. Fairly easy for mods announce sessions here, to delete stuff, though I don't think you get trolls so much on f/b, just the right wing nuts tend to be cranky. Never saw a pond group on f/b struggle other than some over do spamming their own self interest

 

[bettasngoldfish]

I was on a fish forum where we had scheduled chats on certain nights of the week. It was fun. Didnt talk much about fish though lol The chat option was nice. It was on the home page and you could see when a member was online.

 

[Dave 54]

We seem to be moving away from Val's original Idea here Maria but there has to be that option if we are to make her idea of instant help work perhaps we could split it into two with one for general chat then another more private chat box for people who need help .
You have also got to think about its effect on the forum because if we are all chatting then why createand post in others threads would it at all be damaging in this way ?
Adavisus and slakker point out the facebook option fine but what if you have major problems with face book as we have?
We go online and within 5 minutes our wole PC grinds to a halt so in the end we simply stopped using it .
Jon our IT guy has tried everything to stop this happening but it still does and is at a loss to why ?

Dave and Val

 

[Catfishnut]

I am not well informed on how to set up such live chat rooms. I don't know what is all involved so I don't know how difficult it might be to implement and maintain. However, I have an idea to add to the suggestion here.

Rather than a single "live chat room" would it be possible for an individual GPF member to open a personal semi-private chat exchange? For instance, let us say that I have a water pump dilemma and would like to discuss the situation live RIGHT NOW because my pond is draining away when I run the pump.

So, I open a live chat which anyone can join in upon, if they so desire. I am the host and if anyone is on line and spry enough to take part at 4 am in the morning, I will have someone to chat with about this issue in real time.

However, Dave and Val here have a problem with parasite, virus or bacteria that is killing off their fish rapidly. They need to do something quick and so they don't want to talk about my leaky pump, they need to address their issue. So Dave and Val can open their own live chat session revolving around that theme only.

This would be beneficial in this way because, as the host of the live chat session, you decide on the direction of the discussion.

A single "open to all" chat room would allow for the discussions to go off in all directions. If one person had an urgent topic at the same time that someone else did, who would be served first and best. How would you prioritize this discussion and its direction so that everyone was served equally and in a timely fashion?

Here, I am proposing that you would have one section to the list of individual GPF forums which was labeled LIVE CHAT. You open that section and you could see all the live chat sessions which are currently active and organized by the HOST's title. You could jump into any one of them if you have the mind to. You would have to log-in to the chat to be able to post replies, but if you exit to go to another thread or leave the forums entirely you would be automatically logged out of the chat session and have to log back in to resume posting. If no GPF members are logged into the chat session, the chat would show as inactive and be a "read only" historical document unless the original host reopens the session.

This would preserve all of the discussion and ideas for future use, but the chat session itself would not continue on indefinitely.

I am just kicking around ideas here. Not sure if there is any merit to them, but thought I would offer the notion in case they might be considered.

Gordy

 

[bettasngoldfish]

"You have also got to think about its effect on the forum because if we are all chatting then why createand post in others threads would it at all be damaging in this way ?"

Dave, I often felt that the chat function was taking away from the forum itself. Many times there was good info given there but not saved for future reference.