For years the shoutbox has been brimming with activity, sometimes spanning over several pages in a single day, but lately we've experienced a significant decline. Some of this can be attributed to the school cycle, as finals roll around and term papers are due, people simply don't have enough time to devote to long conversations or scanning for interesting content - but the summer bump will not fix everything.
A number of chat channels have sprung up here and there, most significant to the present is the SEN Skype group. For my own safety and for the productivity of this topic i'll preface this by saying - it's not a bad idea, they have better technology making for more efficient communication, no need to spam refresh, no need to upload to external sites to share files, and something like this should be considered - but it does pose a problem to the unity of the community...
Not everyone is going to embrace the separate channel of communication, many will use both, but many will end up using one much more than the other - and therein lies the problem, SEN is a small community, and the fastest way to kill a small community is to fracture it into smaller ones.
As far as i'm concerned the path forward is clear, we need to achieve the communication advantages possessed by separate lines of communication (such as Skype) without separating them from the shoutbox and from large portions of SEN.
As for my ideas for specifically addressing this problem:
- Create a third-party add-on to Skype (or a similar programs), such that it logs you on to SEN and sends the public chat messages sent to the SEN chatroom to the SEN shoutbox
- Create a bot to echo chat from here to there (is this against the rules?)
- Create a chat client specifically for the SEN shoutbox implementing many features found in other chat programs
- Change shoutbox software to something that already essentially does -^
- Massive updates to shoutbox to make it standalone-worthy of 2013
As for other suggested ideas:
- IRC ? (not sure this addresses the problem, but do discuss)
It would not be terribly difficult to get a chat program compatible with the shoutbox from my understanding, but I'm not personally versed in networked programming and thus we may have trouble finding someone that is and has the time - whats more SEN's code isn't terribly stable, changes will probably cause some intermittent problems.
A third party program for (skypeish programs) is perhaps my favorite solution, all it would require is keeping the user logged into SEN when active (a simulated 'refresh' click every 14 minuets or so), reading (with auto-refresh) and duplicating the text they send; a weekend's work of hacking at most. Though this may require a bot to send shouts back to the skypeish program if the third party program cannot be made to insert what it reads automatically, possibly causing inelegant text on that side.
A bot would be very simple to implement, as I recall some people have, in the past, created websites that capture and post real-time changes from SEN. Though we would have to worry about being compliant with (Skypeish programs) rules, and unless it was warped into the existing shoutbox code the resulting text would be inelegant.
So SEN, what are your feelings/ideas on/for moving forward with our communications?
TheNitesWhoSay - Clan Aura - github
Reached the top of StarCraft theory crafting 2:12 AM CST, August 2nd, 2014.
Reached the top of StarCraft theory crafting 2:12 AM CST, August 2nd, 2014.