We need to seriously upgrade our chat room software. This EZBoard chat room that allows only 25 people is hindering our ability to advertise these author chats. What would we do if the New York Times had an article abou this chat and 100 people showed up?

Anyone that knows of quality chat software please let me know right away!!

We need to be able to have at least 100 people in the chat room. I also need the ability to "gag" everyone other than the "allowed chatters."

If we had 100 people in the room we would still want no more than 20 people with the ability to chat. The rest would have read the article in one of numerous papers and came as a spectator. Only active BookTalk members would be allowed to post.

Any ideas?

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be."

These are the programs I have found so far...

mIRC This is free and might be the best option. The problem is that there is a steep learning curve to mIRC. We need people to be able to click a button and enter our chat room.

ParaChat Pro This has everything we need, but costs too much. $69.95 per month!

RaiderSoft Java Chat This one might have to work. It is $75 per year, so it is not as expensive as the others. The problem is...it is not ideal for guest chats. I really need the ability to decide who can enter text into the chat window and who cannot. I don't think this one has that feature. But...we could have unlimited people in the chat room. But...they could all talk and make the chat chaotic! This is difficult.

I guess we could have all our moderators present for author chats and ask everyone in the chat room to sent questions directly to them to be fielded to the guest speaker. After the guest chat is over, we could open the foor and chat freely for however long people wanted.

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be."

If you set up an IRC channel, I believe there are java clients you can imbed in the website.

I personally don't think mIRC is too steep to learn just how to chat; the complexity comes in file sharing and other less relevant functions.

www.booktalk.org/chat.php

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be."

The link in my above post is to the BookTalk "Chat" page. I have purchased chat software that will allow an unlimited number of people in the chat room. There are limited moderation features, so during the Stephen Pinker chat I will need some help from some people to make sure we don't have any spammers or hecklers.

If you are an active BookTalk member and interested in helping moderate the chat let me know. Basically, you would have the ability to kick people from the room or ban them. I may password protect the chat room for that night.

Anyone interested in helping me get the word out to the science community about this chat? You can email me at chris@booktalk.org Thank you!

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be."

MSN chatrooms are mIRC based and a lot easier for people to use, and fairly simple to manage.

Up to 100 people can join at one time.
The owners/hosts of the room have complete control.
You can make somebody (or everybody) a 'spectator' [they can listen but not talk]
Kicking/banning can be done by owner/hosts.

I write a lot of mIRC scripts to manage MSN rooms and could provide some general help or more involved help if necassary.

If you need anymore information just let me know.

Kyle

I appreciate your offer to help. I had no idea that MSN allowed you to control the room so much. As of right now, the only feature we need that is not provided by our new room is the ability to prevent everyone other than specified people to chat.

During author chats what I will do is give a whole bunch of members "administrative priveledges." They can then boot people from the room when needed. Oh, the other feature I would love would be to have a bot in the room at all times.

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be."

If you really want to limit access to the room, you can set a room key so that nobody can enter unless they know the password. You could also make the room invite only, so that only those you invite can enter.

MSN is shutting down its free chat service in Oct.

Now I am looking for a new chat service also.

Kyle

Bring your people over to use the BookTalk chat room if you like. It is sitting empty other than on Thursday nights and during author chats. BookTalk might gain some new members in the process...and the room works well. I could assign you moderator privileges or powers so that you could boot people at will.

Chris

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward,for there you have been, and there you will always want to be."