G'day Chris,

You can turn that on in your control panel.

Just for clarification, it will remain a feature on the new site.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

^ Back when, I thought you decided to turn that feature on for new members (a decision I supported and still do), but were reluctant to do it for existing members in case it rocked their boats.

Frankly I would strongly argue for to be on by default anyway.

It can easily become the default setting for new members. One thing I haven't had a momnet to work out though is how to advise them of their correct default setting as it will be the opposite of the default setting for members before the feature was introduced.

I then chose to leave things as is until the new site rolls out as it will likely be that the latter setting will be the only one - ie: everyone will view thread listings in the mode where most recently updated ones are close to the top. I agree it is the only one that makes sense.

I haven't done much on the new site in the last five or six weeks as home life activities have got in the road though in about two weeks this progress will kick up a bit.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

One thing I haven't had a moment to work out though is how to advise them of their correct default setting as it will be the opposite of the default setting for members before the feature was introduced.

Why bother? Members who frequent this place will cotton on quickly enough, and I'd venture that infrequent visitors will not even notice given that they'll have a screenful of unread threads anyway.

Otherwise, you have the email addresses so advise all members via a bulk email.

^^^^^^ This.

Maybe you should add a chat function so you and other collectors can chat about collecting vintage stuff, for example TV's etc so yeah, I would use it frequently after school and amazingly the school lets me check on this site, so thanks good guy school One thing I hate about school computers is that they don't let you on YouTube, it is annoying, and hear me out, the DET should just unblock youtube as there is some educational stuff on there, and i'm jealous at the teachers that get to go on it, now back on topic I think the chat function would work really well, amazingly good suggestion right?

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"I'd rather have a CRT than nothing" - me
"people just throw working CRTs out, it is NOT FUNNY!" -me

Nah,
every site Ive been involved in that added chat ended up getting rid of it. Not enough use to justify.

Ben

The only time that I have seen a chat feature work effectively is when site members agree on a "chat hour", like a muster.

I'm not a fan of chat myself. I'd much prefer to see the promised new site implemented.

I only recently removed webchat from this site. The chatroom was IRC-based and hosted on the IRC network I co-own with three other people.

The chatroom worked fine providing you were comfy with the quirks of Java, the programming environment that supports IRC-hosted webchat however there were two problems.

1. The chatroom was seldom used and was more of a ghost town for the seven years it was here. Members generally prefer the forums because they don't miss the discussions.

2. To prevent security warning dialogues showing on Java applets the applet and supporting files must be hosted on the same domain as the IRC server. I was not able to provide this so the security warnings probably scared a few people off.

With all this in mind, there are no plans to bring the chatroom back. I am also finding it very difficult to allocate time to finishing off the new site at the moment though at least the new site will eventually make an appearance. When it does it will more than make up for the lack of live chat.

I'll let you all in on a little secret though. The actual chatroom does still exist though you need an IRC-chat programme such as mIRC to access it. You guys would need to teach yourselves how to use it though. If that is not an issue, the server's address is irc.induced.net and the chatroom is called #VintageRadio.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

I only ever clicked on the old chat room link here once and my PC got re-booted! Never went near that again.

A chat room feature would be good, providing there would be enough patronage to justify it's existance on here. As Brad and GTC said, there wouldn't be enough people using it at any given time, unless a special time period was allocated for everyone to use it (which would frequently prove inpractical). There are only really a handful of us who frequently check back on the forums anyways, so as nice as chat would be, it is probably best left to social networking sites, such as Facebook.

Chris

Brad,

Have you fixed the password retrieval function yet? As I mentioned to you, its failure to work may explain why we seem to lose active members for no apparent reason.

Years ago we did have two or three group chats here though numbers were down on from the first occasion and those in the room weren't all that talkative although there is a good chance that those there weren't all that conversant with live chat.

If there was an efficient technology available that could allow live chat efficiently and without outsourcing the operation I'd consider bringing the chatroom back. CGI has been tried though this requires a UNIX-based server or addons for it to work on a Windows server and it is not a very customisable or scalable solution. Java is currently subject to a number of security flaws and the fact that this has caused some people (including me) to simply delete the runtime from their computers rules a return to that out.

Facebook has live chat between 'friends' (I think) though I don't use Facebook which means integration between here and there is next to impossible. Of course that should not stop interested parties engaging Facebook if that is their choice.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Not many members here would go to a chatroom just to loiter around - I suspect vintage radio types are not chatty types.

However, there can be times when subsets of members might welcome an offline chat. This forum does not have to contain its own chat system. Members can make appointments to "meet" in IRC or any of the standards-based chat systems (I like Jabber).

A "Private Message" system would be useful, to let members make one-to-one contact without having to unhide their public email address. Also useful for settling trades and sales, or setting up a live-chat appointment. It is a common feature on other forums that I frequent.

Another related feature is a running list of who is logged on at any given time. That indicates when a person is available, since we all have different schedules and availabilities.

Maven

These forums do have a private chat function however it has been turned off since the early days due to people not having a genuine interest in vintage radio signing up and using the private chat feature to spam members who are here for the right reasons.

Unfortunately it is an all too common case of a few spoiling things for the many. I was quite disappointed really.

Another related feature is a running list of who is logged on at any given time.

This is something I do want to include here. The site's logging system records when people are here but there is currently sub-system to cause current users to be displayed - just the number of people presently here. This is on the to-do list for the new site.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...