The Dink Network

A couple of times this summer, I've thought about hosting chats. And each time I question whether anybody would actually attend said chats. Now, rather than question this for myself yet again, I'd like to put it out there for you dinkers to comment on: if I host chats, will you attend?

Read comments for specificer (if that's a word... well, it is now) questions.

The thing is, most of my chats in the past have been fairly unfocused on Dink. We've had a set of topics to get the chat started, and then built off those topics as we've gone. Usually, by the end of the chat, we're not talking about Dink. While I personally like this sort of informal, actual "chat" format, I can see where a lot of people would be discontent with that. So there's another question: Would you be more likely to attend chats if I sort of redesigned the format to be more Dink-related, and tried to prevent the chat from going off-topic?

Also, more people attended the chats when it was a java-based format. The way we have it set up now, you must download the mIRC or Trillian client to connect to an IRC chatroom. It's understandable that IRC is a less user-friendly interface and thus we'll get fewer dinkers in the room, but it also has a lot of admin-based advantages over Java. So, would you be more likely to attend chats if we reverted to a Java-based room (a chatroom that you would not have to download a program to use, but you could simply go to a website and access the chatroom from your browser)?

Finally. Last question. Also back in the day of the Java Chatroom, we held one chat at a time that was convenient for European chatters and one chat at a time that was convenient for North American chatters. Personally, I never liked this because it was basically two totally different chats. But some people might have liked it, so Would you like to see chats divided again so that there's a European chat time and a North American chat time?

There you have it. Please post your comments, and tell me what you, personally, would like to see happening with Dink Chat.

i think java-based chats would be a great idea for dink because it would allow more people to openly communicate faster, considering the fact that not everyone has all of the same messenger services

Seeing as I was once chat staff, I feel I better post here.
Getting some chats going again is a good idea Alli, I would certainly try to attend them. As to whether we should have different chat times in different time zones, I would say that is probably a good idea, but not all the time. It could prove very hard for some Dinkers to attend a chat at 2 AM or whatever.
But once in a while, having a big old cross-atlantic chat would be cool.

hmmm i held a proposition but no-one understood me

and does trillian support multi member conversation? because i think you can talk to just one person at a time...
and it would be cool to have lots of chats
european, american, multiple etc.

Well, there'll always be people who have to chat in 02.00 or so, since we live on other sides of Tellus... Some people even live near the north pole, people like me... *sob*

Hmm. Yeah. Anyway. I'd like a java-based chat a lot more. I have mIRC, but personally, I hate it. It's stupid and unnecessarily complex piece of poo poo, and I never use it. It is simply a stupid program. I'll try to attend all sorts of chats as long as they're not in the morning.. nights are ok, days are ok, but I'm never awake on mornings. I guess I'm just not the early riser- type.

And so, about the dink-relation chat type guestion thingie, I think it'd be stupid to force chats to be about Dink, like telling people to stfu and tell them to talk about Dink. I think it matters nothing really, as long as the chats don't turn into rubbish.. And rubbish, that is, a lot of things.

I too, was chat staff... But back during the java chat. And I have to agree it was far easier to connect to, but the admin powers were very crummy.

I have a rather busy life now and wouldn't be able to attend or do much with the chats anyway

Trillian includes an IRC client as well as standard instant messenger clients, so you connect to the same thing as you would in mIRC.

And I'm currently looking at various free Java-based chatrooms... although I sincerely doubt I'll find anything.

Keep the comments coming, people, I need your input.

The only thing I didn't understnad about the trillian irc client untill recently is that to change servers, one has to creat a new connection entirely, you can't just change the one you had. But again, maybe thats just me.
Also, I wish we had something like a count down to the next chat. Would save me *so* much trouble. I was always late or something.

You mean like some kind of constantly running clock in the events section that was set according to your time zone preferences? That might be cool... then again, I think anything i log in the events section has the time set to your time. But... I'm not sure.

Well, how would be set to your time zone? Unless it was just a bit of code that lifted the clock off the computer and figured from there... But that could cause problems for thouse who either don't set their time zone, or got their computer clock changed to get around product limitations... anyway...

I thought you, cough, redink, cough could just put a squidget of code that would just count down to an apointed future date... It would be generic, as the chat would be four hours away, in every time zone, so the time zone part wouldn't matter, unless someone wanted an exact date&time for the chat. In that case, I would just give them a calculator.

What I meant to say was that it would be set according to how your time zone is set in your board preferences.

But then again, the generic idea is generally much better.

well maybe people could travel back in time to get to the chat thingy. I made a time machine with a toothpick, a beercan, some string, and Tal.

i would go as long as i could, and its fun when they get off-topic

Yea i would come as often as possible

Okay. I see the dink network is back up. I was talking to Seth about hosting it. but I guess that is over now!
Would like very much to be one of sysop on this chat room. But I have limitations. Old 486, win95os 3gb hard drive. 56k modem on verizon which I get only 2400 cps tops. Allful.
But I have used Mirc and have it on the Hard Drive. Can you get to your chat room from a
standard mirc. without the other thing.?

Thanks Hero
133mh computer. I have used

We're not hiring any more staff right now, but we might in the future if people actually start going to chats.

How to connect using mIRC: check out this tutorial.