Board Thread:Wiki Running/@comment-27028390-20150130231609/@comment-3225604-20150131113727

But then I think the most ironic thing of disabling the chat is that other wikis don't seem to have a problem of "instigating misunderstandings" in chats which will lead to the ultimate shutdown of the chat. Halo Wiki, Call of Duty Wiki, or other popular wikis you may count of, doesn't seem to have many serious issues of chat, unless I'm wrong. Disclaimer: I might be so wrong. I repeat, I might have convicted a very big mistake.

There are reasons why chat should not be enabled, but based on this case of disabling the chat, I imagine that some people will say:

"Closing down the chat because of misbehavior/misunderstanding of users?? Hahaha! *Adds a lot insults to the wiki related to infertility and embarrassing comments*"

I do not intend to insult the wiki, but somehow it reflects that how we have not done much in providing a nice environment to chat in the wiki. To solve this problem, I only think that disabling the chat is the only last resort under this reason. The most probable change should be a change in chat rules. However, a lot of consultation are need, and such changes will not be easy to make, since we have to care about other users' concerns and whatnot. A good chat rule will most likely minimize the number of blocks enforced due to misunderstanding.

I somehow agree that Storm2's argument that closing down the chat will not really minimize the number of "dramas" (I hope you know which cases I refer to), since a "drama" can be caused elsewhere and will cause anyone to leave, even with proofs. Therefore, closing down the chat won't actually solve the existing problem, but what we can know, we can solve the problem of users trying to insult people or break rules without anyone seeing. Therefore, in short, shutting down the chat will not cure the problem, but mitigate the problem.

I also think that Imamadmad is not trying to be anti-democratic. Remember he is just carrying out a trial. We just want to see if closing down the chat is effective for decreasing the number of misunderstandings and instigation. To find out a result, you can't just make hypothesis. You need to do experiments in order to know if your hypothesis is correct or not, otherwise it is just equal to blind guessing. I respect Imamadmad's decision on it.

Well the main problem of chat in my opinion is that the feature is quite primordial. There are a lot of features not included in the chat. Even with chat hacks, the chat feature is not really mature. First, you cannot add pictures, and you cannot toggle the size of emoticons, hence emoticons may sometimes look flattened, stretched or distorted, which is really uncomfortable to some people. Second, without the chat hacks you cannot know when a user has keyed something to the chat, that is no sound is heard of new messages. This is one of the major disadvantages of Wikia's chat, which discourages you to do multi-tasking. Third, the main problem is that by typing "enter" you have entered a message to the chat room, which for me is a hassle. The only way to solve this problem when you want to open a new sentence is to type "shift+enter", which is quite inconvenient in my opinion. This also causes what Imamadmad has mentioned, urging somebody to have a prompt response, which may involve accidental typos and vulgarities, causing misunderstandings. Finally, there is no "toolbar" function for users to add emoticons without typing a code. New chat users will not know how to make emoticons, or suddenly made an emoticon without notice. Sadly, the way to prevent unwanted emoticon is do brackets, but the effectiveness may be questioned since not everyone will know how to avoid converting words into emoticons.

In conclusion, the reason why I don't really care about the existence of the chat feature is that the chat feature in Wikia is not so mature as in Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and so on.