Why isn't the chat functionality city specific?

[Takeshi Miike]

You know, I'd love to use the chat board, but if you ever go there, it's really the Dallas chat board. What's preventing chat from being city specific like the forums? Is it a technical hurdle or is it that no one's suggested this before?

[MarleyMonroe]

Did not know there was a chat room! cool i am going to check it out!! But yeah being organized by City would be nice, but maybe they dont do it like that because so many city's would only have one or two people in the chat room... so they just do one big one. Who knows!

[knotty man]

i tend to lurk in the chat room almost everyday. i rarely comment unless someone from austin is in there. the ladies post alot of pic, which is nice, but sometimes it get to be too much.
its true though, most of the ppl there tend to be from dallas, okla. or houston. its fun, but really, what are the chances of me drivin that far JUST to see a lady.
if you wanna meet new ppl and flirt alil bit. go for it. if your lookin for business. its a waste of time. you may catch a travelin gent, but almost everyone in the austin forums knows you by ads or reputation(which is outstanding btw)
also. if you wanna see whose in chat before you go in. go to the home page and scroll to the very bottom and it lists whose in chat at that moment

[Sexy Roxanne]

If they did it that way, I'd think there would be a lot of folks taking to themselves.

I agree with Knotty all very true.

[GenesisNicole]

I am in the chat room from time to time, and agree that it is just for a time killer.

While most of the folks are from Dallas or OKC, it is nice to converse with people in different cities/states...

Only met 1 gent that was in my city, so not sure how the ladies use it for business....But I enjoy "SOME" of the conversations that do pop up....

Genesis Nicole

[ynot_y]

Yep go check the chat out, been in there my self not bad

[Grecco]

It is pretty entertaining

[Takeshi Miike]

I check it out periodically, but it would be nice if I could chat with folks in Austin. Not only that, it would give you the opportunity to get a sense of a girls personality (which IMHO comes across more in real time). Every once in a while too, I could see doing a spur of the moment thing begun by a chat.

[sixxbach]

Chat sucks when you have a heavy handed owner who likes to meddle in things and act unprofessional.....

sixx

[Rand Al'Thor]

Critical mass.

As many have mentioned, a chat room has to reach critical mass/number of users for it to become viable. Otherwise, you'll just get a bunch of people popping, looking to see that it's empty, then leave.

Depending on how well it's coded, chat rooms can be a pretty big resource hog on the server it's running.

[Takeshi Miike]

I think if Dallas can achieve critical mass, perhaps other cities can as well...

As for resource hogging, I can't imagine that a technology as mature as a chat window would be that difficult to implement without creating resource issues on your server. On the other hand, I have seen some pretty impressive cases of incompetence in my years in software development.

[Rand Al'Thor]

Originally Posted by Takeshi Miike

I think if Dallas can achieve critical mass, perhaps other cities can as well...

As for resource hogging, I can't imagine that a technology as mature as a chat window would be that difficult to implement without creating resource issues on your server. On the other hand, I have seen some pretty impressive cases of incompetence in my years in software development.

It's not that it would create resource issues, but it is more resource intensive than a board. When we're talking about hosted service, it all costs money - server resources and bandwidth. Then the owners have to make the decision if the added cost is worth having the multiple chat rooms.

[Takeshi Miike]

Originally Posted by Rand Al'Thor

It's not that it would create resource issues, but it is more resource intensive than a board.

I don't know that this is an accurate statement. The page for chat is static. Everything except the text coming in is downloaded once. If I'm reading through pages in the forum, I'm constantly requesting full page content including images and advertisements (both huge resource hogs) as well as all the html and script to run the page. I honestly think having a user participating in chat should be less resource intensive that someone reading through forums. Again, this is implementation dependent. If your chat is using more server resources than normal browsing, that's a red flag in regards to the implementation to me. Additionally, as IPv6 becomes the standard over the next couple of years, true multicast should further reduce those resources.

[Aidan MacKenna]

There are not enough people in the chat room to make it city specific really. I may find 3 or 4 people from Houston on there at any given time. Occasionally you will get a surprise appearance from someone you know. Even if you don't know them it's nice to give them a shout out so when you are in their respective city, you may be able to get to know them (Sixx ).

I'm just saying... it will take more people using the chat room more often to even offer it up as an option to the "Administrators That Be." Besides, I don't want my sweet moderators to get overloaded with work and not be able to play (ZTonk ).

[sixxbach]

[quote=AidanMacKenna;1578618]. Even if you don't know them it's nice to give them a shout out so when you are in their respective city, you may be able to get to know them (Sixx ).
quote]

wink wink......

sixx