What time for Chat Parties?

[Sylvia Bernstein]

Any one who has tried to use our Chat Room knows that it feels pretty lame to put out a question there, or try to talk to someone and feel like you are standing in an empty room with no one to talk to!  

Let's set a time weekly...daily...whatever you guys want so that those who are interested in chatting with other members can come in and join the  party and know that they won't be the only ones there!

Once we seem to come to some sort of a consensus I'll post it permanently above the chat room on the home page and we'll see what happens. 

[Chi Ma]

7pm PST is good for me. :)

[Sylvia Bernstein]

Every night?

[Chi Ma]

Nah I don't have that much useful info to pass on. Maybe 7 every night in all time zones.

[TCLynx]

My schedule is too unpredictable to set a time. 

[Sylvia Bernstein]

Chi, I'm afraid that would be a 4 hour span every night and might defeat the purpose.  What if we said 9:00 Eastern, 6:00 Western for an hour every night?

[Chi Ma]

Only reason I say the same time in every time zone is that is when the people in your specific area are most likely to be on therefore you get more pertinent local info. If people need to chat with you they know you will be on at 7pm your time and they will just need to be on when you are on. But they will at least know when you are on. Hope that makes sense. You can also set your own "hours" so people know when you are most likely going to be on.

[Jonathan Farrand]

I think 9pm eastern and 6pm western is good. There are alot of members to make this work even if you can't get on every night.

[Chris Schup]

An hour each day is a good start. Maybe bump it up if participation is high. As for the exact time, probably safe to say most suggestions will work for us out in the Pacific. How often does the chat history get erased? Maybe extending the history by a day will allow members to catch up on the convos they missed during the scheduled hour. Got a name for the hour? The Daily Rap?

[Sylvia Bernstein]

I'm liking The Daily Rap, Chris!  I don't think I can affect how long history is kept.  I think it flushes out daily...is that what other's have observed?

[BenHehle Beamz]

i think it gets deleted by midnight. i observed that if i asked a question and no one answered for 2 hours, i tried to check on the next day, and then my question was gone. it would be great if the chat history would exist longer. because sometimes you just have a short question, not worth to open an extra thread for that, so you could check the next day if someone replied to you. :)

[Sylvia Bernstein]

I actually looked into this last night and Ning doesn't give me a way to control when the history is deleted - bummer!  I added a text box over the chat feature now for the Chat Hour...let me know what you guys think.

We'll give this a whirl for a month or so and see if it gets used.  Hope so...