Having a shoutbox for your forum?

Whats your thoughts on having a shoutbox for your forum? Having a shoutbox is not always a bad thing, but there are downsides, members are most likely to just chat most of the time instead of posting.

And having a shoutbox on all forums is not a great idea either depending on your forum's niche. If you have a gaming forum, or general discussion forum then I would say its okay to have a shoutbox. But if you run a webmaster/business forum I would say its best not to have a shoutbox as its not the professional thing to do.

Having one for your members might be fun and give them a more social experience on your forum but overall I would say it doesn't help your forum..

What are your thoughts?

 

I have had a shoutbox/chatbox before, although it was nice to have, the few members that I had would never post and would just chat all the day so you are right about that. I ended up removing it. No plans to add one back to my forum.

 

I agree with you Kaiser, it really depends on the forum topic. If you have a forum radio, then a shoutbox can be used for requests etc. But apart from that, theres not much need for one on forums like these.

 

I have one on my site for now at least, and as Rankin said, it can be used for requesting songs or just to leave a quick message (people haven't chatted a whole lot in it). If it ever gets to the point where people are posting there instead of on the forum, I'll remove it to encourage forum posting, but that's not an immediately foreseeable concern.

 

Well th shoutbox you have is fine as its a small one for your forum's sidebar, and its pretty small so its not comfortable for regular chatting, so the one you have is fine I would say. I am usually referring to a shoutbox like the one being used here http://forum.gamerz-inn.com/

 

I don't see a point in having a shoutbox on an online community, or any site that runs forums. Why? It can take away activity, and means more work for the staff members. Taking away active from the community, isn't good, and especially what's the point of a shoutbox on a forum? The point is to get your community flowing with content, and a shoutbox doesn't help with that.

 

Very true Carlos, a shoutbox might be a good place to connect with other members, but doesnt that defeat the purpose of a forum in all? As the forums are a place to chat about many different subjects.

 

I installed a shoutbox and people would chat in it instead of posting, luckily the shoutbox I used had a feature where you could force the member to make a certain amount of posts a day to use the shoutbox.

 

While many say that a shoutbox removes activity from the forum itself, it's also a very good place to talk about anything without having to navigate through pages of threads. Even though I like them, I don't use them on my forums.

 

I don't mind them on the bottom, but I think it should be as premium option to donators, etc. so it does not take activity away from the forums to members

 

Now that sounds like a good idea to have as a feature included for a shoutbox. If I had a shoutbox like that I wouldn't mind having one. Havent heard of any shoutboxes like that though..

 

I've always found it detrimental to the forum community. The whole point of a forum being good for a community is people can come on at anytime and catch up with everything going on. Shoutboxes just cause cliques to form.

 

Yea I have seen that happen where others don't get attention in the shoutbox..

 

I think shoutboxes are a little cheezy. They take away forum activity. If your community is large enough, consider setting up an IRC channel. (Freenode is a good host for that)

 

I should have mentioned that, yes a IRC channel is a good thing to have. If you have a shoutbox but on a different page where its not on the index thats a good thing to do as it wont be used as much.

 

Shoutbox in my forum means, I can monitor real-time users in my forum and what's trending in my content. That's what I think.

 

We have it as an option for donators, and I believe VIPs automatically gets access to it, as do staff members. It's almost like placing ads in a since: If it's in a decent spot (I too prefer them at the bottom) then I don't mind. I think restricting access to certain groups like we do is a great idea, because you don't want to have a site with our kind of stats where all 135 members just post in the shoutbox and don't participate in regular discussion on the forums. All the shoutbox is for is just for quick little chit-chat. Not spending your whole visit screwing off and whatever and not posting about on the forum!

 

Sounds like a good idea only restricting it to certain usergroups, not bad.

 

Yea it is, also you've got to give your donators a little bit more than your standard members

 

I know when Ash first presented to the idea to me, I was of course, a tad skeptical about it, thinking: Is it really fair to the rest of the member base to restrict almost everyone to it? But then I realized that in that case it's good to keep some features "secret" so it's almost like an element of surprise in a sense.