Customization Does a shoutbox kill a forum?

[Shawn Gossman]

Do you think a shoutbox, chat box, or chat room feature is a good way to kill a forum?

Many times these features are said to take away from forums. Do you agree with this?

Vote and reply!

 

[Arantor]

The answer is always more nuanced than yes or no.

It’s always been the case that a chat box, shoutbox, Discord etc, will take attention and traffic from the forum. The rapid response cycle alone somewhat guarantees a divide of attention.

However, this is not to say one will “kill” the other. They can, under the right circumstances, be a suitable complement - it is normal now in the RP scene for example, to do plotting and planning and the general community “off topic” stuff lives on the Discord while the actual storytelling lives on the forum. But this has its own perils and foibles for sure.

As long as there is still a healthy amount of discussion of longer form (that never suits a Discord/chat feature), the two can co-exist. But the forum will inevitably be quieter in the off-topic areas for it.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

The answer is always more nuanced than yes or no.

It’s always been the case that a chat box, shoutbox, Discord etc, will take attention and traffic from the forum. The rapid response cycle alone somewhat guarantees a divide of attention.

However, this is not to say one will “kill” the other. They can, under the right circumstances, be a suitable complement - it is normal now in the RP scene for example, to do plotting and planning and the general community “off topic” stuff lives on the Discord while the actual storytelling lives on the forum. But this has its own perils and foibles for sure.

As long as there is still a healthy amount of discussion of longer form (that never suits a Discord/chat feature), the two can co-exist. But the forum will inevitably be quieter in the off-topic areas for it.

I think they can be helpful or complimentary for some niches.

I wouldn't want to add one to my general forum. I feel like the chat could steal from it. Maybe that would be a feature for premium members.

 

[Bryn]

A shoutbox, not so much, but having a Discord channel, your forum better prepare to write its suicide note...

 

[Arantor]

A shoutbox, not so much, but having a Discord channel, your forum better prepare to write its suicide note...

Unless it's a roleplay site in which case Discord is practically mandatory, and the site content is just long-form storytelling that doesn't sit well on Discord because you can't write more than 2000 characters in a single post.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I think it depends on the type of forum you have. If it's a general chat forum it might kill activity on the forum. If it's a roleplaying one, it could help keep the simple banter off the main forum if you don't have a ooc section.

 

[Smithy]

Yes, I think a shoutbox kills forums specially for General Discussions forum which I own one.
General Discussion forums good for discussions/chatting.. a shoutbox would kill my forum.

 

[frm]

and traffic from the forum

You can "easily" adjust this by creating a thread "Chat Log" and posting a reply of the previous 20 messages on loop. At least then, it gets indexed and could bring some traffic.

 

[Arantor]

I didn’t mean search traffic - I meant human traffic. People tend to visit the chat, do their social thing and not visit the rest of the forum. When you don’t have a chat, people visit off-topic sections to chat in between other posts.

 

[frm]

I didn’t mean search traffic - I meant human traffic. People tend to visit the chat, do their social thing and not visit the rest of the forum. When you don’t have a chat, people visit off-topic sections to chat in between other posts.

You could probably get creative with a chatbox that scans phrases against popular topics and have a note appear below the poster's comment (for them to see only) to a degree like:
"Nobody's talking about X. Would you like to create a new thread to discuss it further?"