April 26th, 2020 at 2:55 PM
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.
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.
