Speaking of the chat rooms, what are your thoughts on ways we can improve on the experience and increase their use?

One of the issues is that folks forget they’re there. Others have started chat invitation threads, and the Mod Team has decided that those are allowed in Meta, and new ones can be started once the most recent one no longer appears on the first page of Meta. Any other ideas of what might help remind people of the chat rooms?

When I tried to use the chat rooms back in their heyday, I was overwhelmed by the speed of the various conversations that were happening all in one stream. My brain doesn’t process all that input so quickly, and my typing very accuracy is terrible when trying to get a clever comment in before someone else says something.

We’ve heard many others state similar complaints about the chat rooms, but we still feel it’s important to have a place for Jellies to socialize and let loose. I did like using IM in the past, and prefer text messages over emails over phone calls these days; plus chat can be fun if it’s a smaller group and a mellower pace. The benefit of chat over PMs is that more than two people can participate, and there is the conversational aspect.

Thus, I was thinking that we could create a ‘Sea Turtle’ room for this purpose. Of course, the pace is set by the participants, so if some speed-chatters enter the room, they might need reminding to slow down or to move to a different room. Would any of those who were turned off by the frenetic nature of chat consider trying it?