Customization Does a shoutbox kill a forum?

[Nomad]

I think, all the discussions in a forum should happen in the forums not on the chat boxes, private messages and even something like Discord. Well, sometimes you might need to send a private message and if yo are managing a big team, using Discord can also be good but when you have a chat system enabled and everyone starts using it, it is sure a death.

 

[fdk]

I don't like chatboxes or shoutboxes. They absolutely do take away from the engagement on the rest of the forum, so in my opinion, should only be considered as options for forums who are already huge and are actively looking to limit just how many posts are being made. In a situation where there's hundreds or thousands of members online daily, I can see why a chatbox might be useful... in almost any other scenario, it's a bad idea, in my opinion.

 

[Cloaked]

Chat on one of my sites was very popular. Conversations in the chat were archived and reposted in the forum. Those threads would become very popular. When I took the chat down because there wasn't a version for xenforo 2.3 yet the users kept asking how much longer.

Saying that I wouldn't chat again. While it didn't distract from the forum and in fact took the smalltalk out of the forums I wouldn't add it again because of the fact the site went without because of an update.