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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

I have never been on a forum where the chatbox has been successful. There was one site where two members only wanted to be in the chatbox and not post on the forum itself. They complained when the chatbox was finally removed, but they were the only ones. No one else noticed it gone.

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.

I think so too. All the small talk ends up in the shoutbox, which leaves the activity in the forum dead in the water.

 

 

 

Small talk belongs on the forum, as it’s great for community building and member bonding.

 

 

Implementing a shoutbox might not be a good idea at all.

Both of my boards had shoutboxes on them and both did well and were better having them then they would have been if they didn't. I'd say what kills forums is piss poor administration/moderation more than anything else.

No-one is suggesting that bad moderation/bad administration won't kill forums - it absolutely will.

 

And I'm absolutely certain that some niches and forums will benefit from shoutboxes/chatboxes/etc, but I haven't seen anything to suggest this is common. I've seen far more anecdotal evidence that it will detract from activity across the board than it helps - but nothing ever exists in absolute.

I dislike chatboxes because people will share thoughts in a chatbox instead of writing in topics. It's like having a discord, all the activity goes somewhere else, but just not on the forum.

No-one is suggesting that bad moderation/bad administration won't kill forums - it absolutely will.

 

And I'm absolutely certain that some niches and forums will benefit from shoutboxes/chatboxes/etc, but I haven't seen anything to suggest this is common. I've seen far more anecdotal evidence that it will detract from activity across the board than it helps - but nothing ever exists in absolute.

 

This is a great take actually. There are absolutely some sites where a chatbox could be beneficial. For most, it'll take away from activity on the actual forum, and for some, that may be fine - their main goal or metric of measuring their site activity may include activity in their chatbox, they may not value or attribute the same "value" to a permanent thread or post that others do. I would say that would probably be a minority opinion among forum administrators, though.

Shoutbox can and does take activity away from a forum. However, if the shoutbox is used consistently it can boost activity, and have its benefits. It helps me provide fast support to members in my community.

A few years ago, it was an awesome feature of online forums, but it's just not as necessary as it was back in the day. Members can create their own discussions through PMs, which can limit who gets to discuss things there.