[Darth-Apple]

Discord is an IRC-like chat room server that is built for modern times. Much like IRC, there are channels that can be joined, but Discord adds invitation systems, more advanced user accounts, profiles/avatars, voice chats, and a number of other things. 

Personally, I've never been too much a fan, but it's growing on me. (Makestation does not have its own discord, but a few of us hang out in the Simmania Discord Channel, run by @brian51. )

Discord: (Screenshot courtesy of OMG Ubuntu)
   

Anyway, I much prefer Ajax Chat personally (only because it's much more lightweight). I used to host about 600 of them on Chatcave, running on a tiny 512 MB VPS. Surprisingly it ran like a charm, never overloaded the server or had issues of any sort. Safe to say, it's lightweight. It's a robust and highly efficient chat script compared to many of the alternatives.

Ajax Chat: (Screenshot credit: Official website)

   

For those of us who spend time in various chat rooms, what is your preference? Discord, Ajax Chat, or old-fashioned IRC?

[tc4me]

Good Mooooooorning from Austria. its 8 am o'clock, I am not a fan of these chats, and I don't find the inclusion of external sites particularly good

[Kyng]

Between IRC and Discord, I much prefer Discord, due to its features - although, I've never been a great fan of chat software in general. I spend most of my Discord time in DMs with one or two friends, rather than in servers.

I've never used Ajax Chat - and, it's unlikely that I ever will, since I don't know a whole lot of people on it.

[Guardian]

Forums are where its at.

[Kyng]

Forums are where its at.

Yeah, my answer is a mix of "Discord" and this. 

I kind of like Discord, but to me, it's something you add on to another project (like a forum, a wiki, or a YouTube channel). I'm not a fan of stand-alone Discords that aren't attached to anything else.

For banter and chatter, Discord is the best of the chat software - but for longer-form and more thoughtful discussion, forums are where it's at.

[SpookyZalost]

IRC, it's old school, you can use it in DOS, it's stable and has been around since before the internet in some form.

it's a relic but one that's probably always going to be there.

also it's like insanely light weight.

[tc4me]

A chat in a forum should only take the short posting like yes no .. and smalltalk. The one in the forum is exactly the right one

[Darth-Apple]

Shoutboxes are great, but full-blown chat rooms tend to have the problem of negatively impacting activity on smaller forums.

The problem with adding them is that the whole community begins to migrate towards the chat, and new members tend to join less often when there isn't good forum activity. This, in turn, sets the snowball effect into motion and a forum's overall health declines. It creates a problem where a forum cannot really gain new members, but where it can still lose members at its normal pace.

Chat rooms are great and larger forums can usually handle them easily, but the forum itself has to be the backbone if a community can survive the long haul. Otherwise, chat rooms can be detrimental to a smaller forum.

[SpookyZalost]

@Darth-Apple simmania is an excellent example of this

[Darth-Apple]

Simmania was pretty much my thoughts exactly. That was a lesson learned the hard way.