An UnPopular suggestion

[Ezemel]

If the shoutbox is gone, this community is pretty much dead.

The only thing that keep it's heart beats, are the members chatting on shoutbox, lately, they don't even bother anymore.

So, I don't see how that could work.

[UnGod]

> I'm sorry, but I'm not going to make threads about how I need to head to the shop or how hungry I am. I see your point, however, the discussions in the shoutbox doesn't really fill enough purpose for threads, so a possible side effect is that the shoutbox disappears, and no new threads are made as compensation because there's really nothing worth making them for, and in the end it will just seem like an even deader place.
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> Edit: I just realised how biased I look.

correct, You wouldnt. you would be forced to come up with clever topics and developed thoughts in order to participate and communicate. And i disagree. many forum topics are discussed in the shoutbox and never become actual topics making the forums look much more dead than they are. example: at 9pm the shoutbox is full of people discussing lots of things and the site seems active. at 3pm the next day none of those people are here and the site seems untouched in the last day.

there is no trace of discussions made in the shoutbox after the lines of text float up into the void. if i work until X time and most of the community is on at a different time I would miss out on most of the discussions in the site because after these discussions are made there is no record or lasting impression for others to continue with.

> Hahahaha no.

I disagree.

> It would be cool if we could set subjects on the shoutbox and a user can type a command to participate in that subject where the discussion or debate is later moved on to a post. As long as the subjects are kept to a moderate level of debate, (which probably won't happen) I don't see a problem with something like this. It would get a good discussion going as well as increase board counts.

good idea but you're just talking about making channels in the chat for multiple chatrooms and dumping the chat into the forum which would be messy. it would be best to just use the forum as a means of communication and remove the competition. similarly creating an IRC channel only ports the community away from the forum to a different chat instead of this one. If you remember my jokes.. we should use teamspeak, no! video chat. two other ways of communicating that dont let people respond for days at a time.

this chat, another chat, voice chat, video chat.  its all like talking on another "forum". the visitors of eclipse unless they're at the right time and/or the right place will miss out on the community and potentially never become part.

> Lol, shoutbox has been up for over two years. The fee times its went down the site has been completely dead during its absence.

not surprising since the shoutbox is an easy lazy way to socialize with people who have known eachother for a long time. Its not like they were abandoning the community because of the shoutbox leaving. they were holding out for it to return.

> Honestly shoutbox needs to stay, if i pop online and see no shoutbox and nothing but topics that i have nothing to say in im just gonna go right away again.

This is how a forum works. eclipse doesnt benifit in anyway from you idling on the main page to talk in the shoutbox. even if yuki put up ads to help support the website costs a bunch of people idling doesnt generate any revenue. forums are for posting. The heart of this community is the forum and the shoutbox is handicapping the forum from being what it could be.

> Johnson, don't you spam the forum posts anyway? Lol.
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> As I said in the shoutbox when this debate was actually carried on there.
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> OP has a point, but on the contrary, not having the shoutbox kills the reason why we're even here.
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> The forums are mainly dedicated to game development, (mainly)… So, apart from QA, Off Topic, and some threads...
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> There's no point in being around for those who are currently not doing anything game related.
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> The shoutbox allows fast interaction amongst people who like (or dislike) each other, but the intention is community interactions.
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> The forum does it, to an extent. The shoutbox just seems to fulfill it, even though there's always disagreements and debates.

Like above, this site is built around the forum and there are places for posts to be made about things other than game development.

The shoutbox leaches off topics that would otherwise be posted because its more convenient.  its like always stopping at the gas station instead of going to the grocery store. convenience comes at a price. its fast now but you pay for it later. there, in higher prices but here in lacking forum content

> If the shoutbox is gone, this community is pretty much dead.
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> The only thing that keep it's heart beats, are the members chatting on shoutbox, lately, they don't even bother anymore.
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> So, I don't see how that could work.

Forums grow like trees and the shoutbox is stunting that growth. the topics being lost because of the shoutbox existing are preventing discussion between members who would otherwise not talk to one another because of time differences. the website is entirely dependant on feeling active from the shoutbox because of the very few posts being made (because of the shoutbox existing)

but how active exactly? if a handful of people talk in the shoutbox it feels active and conversations can be made. when 50+ people try to talk in a shoutbox suddenly its impossible to have a functional conversation. several little groups of people all having their own conversations with occasional strangers chiming in and more than likely being ignored because its easy to ignore them. the shoutbox is only functional for fewer people and actually prevents those few from posting.

now instead concider how 50+ posters on a forum would look with infinite channels of communication expanded whenever needed by the creation of a new topic. not only semipermenant but organized by topic and those topics organized by sections.

Forums are designred to handle traffic better than shoutboxes and to generate content that can be read and re-read.

a good example of where you might want to be able to re-read threads would be in a Q&A section. rather than asking for help in the chatbox and either being ignored by the handful chatting or imediatly helped without any record of the help wouldnt it be better to create a post that could be indexed into a faq for later?

Small forum communities can easily develop into a mob of bridge trolls that dont like strangers.

ten people ask the same question and suddenly its so annoying to answer that users either ignore them or answer in a unfriendly way.

I Expected a response like this but im glad most all of you are responding in respectul intelligent ways. really all but one but i wont name any names.

[Richy420Rich]

The shoutbox doesn't necessarily stun growth though, if 50 people were working on game development projects + shouting in the shoutbox

These same 50 members would be posting show offs and projects, QA, maybe even in resources and tutorials if they're nice enough.

Problem is, not many members whom are active, are doing much development in VB6 anymore. Therefore all of the above threads are basically on a decline.

I understand what you're saying, the ad traffic is probably on-load and/or on-click? So yeah, it benefits Eclipse more to post on threads.

But on the contrary, I'd still like the ability of a shoutbox, as most social networks have other ways of communicating these days outside of the main idea.

I'm just say facebook, **as an off the head dumb excuse for an example**. Facebook has first off a status wall, then the messenger = single, multi private conversation ability. Then it has groups = private, public. It's got alot of different ways to communicate outside of just status walls.

Just that the days are different, people aren't doing the eclipse dev as much anymore, just nobody cares like they used to.

[aaaron]

I find it funny someone just pops up on hear suggesting that the shoutbox gets removed lol.

[UnGod]

Since i dont have time to be a daily regular i come and go, occasionally checking in on the community as its success is to my benifit.

If you have any valid points to contribute to this discussion i would appriciate them being posted here.

Please stay on topic

[aaaron]

> Since i dont have time to be a daily regular i come and go, occasionally checking in on the community as its success is to my benifit.
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> If you have any valid points to contribute to this discussion i would appriciate them being posted here.
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> Please stay on topic

Then dont suggest the shoutbox to be removed if you're not on here a lot?

[Ancient]

Ungod, your logic has basis in truth but is flawed.

You assumption that the shoutbox takes away from prospective forum posts is on a rudimentary level.

But I have a degree in business admin and in marketing. We need to dig deeper. I will tell you from a marketing persective that removal of the shoutbox would not force people to into changing thier shouts into posts. This would have an adverse effect.

The content that people shoutbox and the content that people post could be viewed as a [Ven Diagram](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venn_diagram). With one circle comprising the content that people shoutbox and one circle comprising the content people post. There would only be a small sliver of the two circles that overlap. This small sliver is what you have become too focused on.

What you have failed to recognize are the ["Negative Externalities"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality) of such a decision. By trying to force the small sliver of the venn diagram into posting, you would eradiciating the whole circle comprised of things people typically shout.

When doing a [Cost & Benefit analysis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis) of decision taking into account BOTH the positive and negative externalities its easy to see that the negative externalities of such a decision would far outweigh any possible beneficial externalities of such a decision.

Keep the Shoutbox :)

The best communities are facilitated not sculpted.

[UnGod]

Thankyou for your well thought out reply henrik your post has a lot of truth and i really appriciate the links it made responding much easier as Im not familiar, but some points are being overlooked.

While You're right in saying the overlap between the forums and shoutbox would be small, we have to take quantity into account. maybe only 10% of whats discussed on the shoutbox would be suitible for posting onto the forum but thats 10% of a large quantity of content. so on the diagram the forums would be a much smaller circle and would benefit largely by gaining that 10%.

Longevity is another concern in that the valuable 10% of shoutbox content that could be forum content is being flashed away in minutes rather than lasting for several days. if a conversation that could of been posted took 20 minutes.. and could of lasted 2800+ minutes there is substantial loss of user generated content, even if we consider the other 90% of shoutbox content that similarly is flashed away into the void.

posting that 10% onto the forum generates more content overall and gives more users reason to visit and click through the site regardless of who is online at the very moment they  themselves come online. 

if you want a community of indie game developers trading ideas,tricks,tips,services the shoutbox should be removed.

if you want a chatroom with a forum for a hat, keep the shoutbox.

[Mohenjo Daro]

Not sure me saying something would have an effect. I'm sorry but getting rid of the shoutbox would kill the site and I have seen the effects, it's a quick way to talk about pointless things. Make a hundred threats about running out to get lunch is just pointless and a waste of space.