(I can’t seem to reply to the original posting, so I’ll start a new thread)
I’ve only known about this website for a few weeks so I’m not sure how the original IGKT Chat Room worked, but as a possible replacement, might I suggest an IRC channel? For those who are unfamiliar with IRC, it’s a internet protocol used mainly for chat rooms. You connect to a chat room with an IRC client. A few popular clients are mIRC, xchat, pidgin, and irssi, there are others, and a few web clients as well. Each chat room hosted on an IRC network, there are many of these as well, however I would suggest freenode (mostly because that’s the one I use already). Within each network, channels are identified by a name starting with a # character, for example, #igkt for the IGKT.
So to summarize, I’ve registered #igkt on irc.freenode.net and plan on hanging out in there from time to time. Stop by if you like, I will gladly transfer ‘ownership’ of the channel to the IGKT secretary if they request it.
Let me know what you think of this idea. (or if you like it and are having trouble connecting)
Some people have used IRC for illegal purposes, including distributing malware. However, this is no different than a website or email, you can use most things for evil purposes.. I’ve used IRC fairly regularly for the past five or six years and have never had any problems with viruses. Although, like everything, you should always be careful what links you lick on just in case someone tries to trick you.
The original chat room was available via IRC as well as via a Java client on the site. The biggest stumbling block with IRC is that it requires the user to download and configure an IRC client. Whilst you and I might be quite comfortable doing that, my experience with the IGKT audience is that many of them would not. Hence the decision to use a chat service that offered a web-based front end as well as IRC.
The chat room was popular with a group of users for a few months but then gradually died a death. It was kept on the site for another 12 months or so but there was very little (if any) activity during that time so I was asked to remove it.
Thanks for for the big of history, Webmistress. I agree that setting up an IRC client could be a bit of a stumbling block, on the other hand, once it’s set up it might make it easier for people to continue using it. It’s also easier to say `the IGKT chat room is #igkt on whatever.net’ than to set up a java IRC client
Out of curiosity, what channel/server did the old chat room point to? I took a look at the Knot_Chat webpage and noticed that that was based on IRC as well, but connecting with a IRC client wasn’t very friendly. (it gave some errors about not being able to change your name)
