There has been murmuring of creating some type of real time chat system, but most of the discussion lately has centered on how to make the post-style discussion system more friendly for newbies (and non-techies). This would probably be a good topic to bring up on the LiquidThreads redesign document: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_talk:LiquidThreads/Redesign
Ryan Kaldari
On 2/7/11 11:49 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
Hello everybody, just joined the list today after getting back from vacation. Thanks to Carol Moore for advertising this list on WikiProject Feminism.
I'm in the U.S. and work for the Wikimedia Foundation as a software developer. I'm also a long time community member and an administrator on English Wikipedia, Commons, and Meta.
I'm really excited to see so much interest in this topic. Looking forward to hearing everyone's thoughts and ideas.
Ryan Kaldari
Ok, here's a software project for you:
Add the code from a MUD, perhaps LPMUD which creates a telnet screen with talker capacity giving the ability to instantly "tell" a message to another user who is logged in. You might need a "who" function to see who is logged on, and a way of telling if they are idle or actively engaged, this is in MUD code. Create a "newbie" channel on which new users could communicate instantly with experienced users who logged on to the channel. There could be other channels too, for specific projects or tasks. MUD code provides for logging.
This duplicates IRC I know, but I'm thinking of something much simpler using telnet. I'm thinking of this as a small window which would display or not within the page presented to the user.
The point is to have a way for new users to immediately inform experienced users if they run into trouble.
Further discussion here and on wiki is advisable, of course, doubtless there are dynamic aspects of this I'm not thinking of.
Fred Bauder
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