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Right now every BW member can read an all time history of the BW chat. There are several members complaining about this.

I suggest to limit the history of the general BW wide chat to one day. 

In the future we will have private and group chats and we could think about different limits for them (or leave it to the groups/participants to decide)

What do you think about it?

In skype, gtalk and other chat programs I appreciate the fact that the data is stored. I often want to look things up later.

The problem here is that the chat log is / would be visible to the public. An ideal solution would remember all that is said, but in a way that only the chat participants can read it.

I think it can be a good compromise to have different channels:

• a public channel where messages are flushed after 24 hours
• another public channel that is not flushed, but where participants can be anonymous (temporary username)
• we could have a third public channel that is not anonymous and not flushed.
• private or group channels which keep their history, but with some rules of who can read what.

These group channels would be very similar to skype:

• I can only read messages that were written in a time when I was a member of the chatroom.
• That means: If I leave the chatroom for a while, I will have a gap in my history.
• That also means: If I join the room, I will not be able to read back on old messages from the time when I was not a member of the chatroom. But, we could show some activity statistic to the new member.
• The members of a chatroom can be online or offline. Offline chatroom members will be listed as members and can read back everything when back online.
• We can make group chatrooms, where membership in a group automatically means membership in the chatroom. I think this would be a nice and simple conceptual model.
• To make all this possible, we need to store the timestamps when people join or leave a chatroom or group.

We won't get all of this in the next 24 hours, but I think the direction is a good one.

I agree with Andreas proposal.

I don't think that the "another public channel that is not flushed, but where participants can be anonymous"will be very useful, but at least, may be it can be useful for the day i want to insult someone ...

This make me think about something : we really must start to think to be able to move the chat on a dedicated server, I think it will create a huge traffic and load peak

I agree that the different public channels are probably overkill, and too complicated. The alternative would be, having group channels which can have different settings, and a public channel with the 24h flush.

For the start, we can obviously begin with a 24h flush solution. 

For the group channels: How else would you do it, if not with checking membership periods? How do you find out who is allowed to read something or not?

I think skype and gtalk showcase the perfect answers to all of these questions.

@midsch:

>  And you really use chatlogs for storage of useful stuff? Come on. I can't really believe it. Results, even if only rough notes should go to wiki/forum. midsch

I think you focus on the wrong area. The main purpose of the chat will be to let members talk about activities such as a barbecue, meeting up somewhere, etc. Often people will forget to put the information into another medium, or, even worse, there is no other medium easily available.

Or, imagine a traveler who wants to discuss meet-up details in chat - how irresponsible would it be to flush this valuable information? "Haha, too late! Did you not write it down on paper? I hope you have a tent!"

And even for work chats, I often use the skype or gtalk chat logs to read back on things from last week, or earlier. For instance, if people have posted code snippets, urls, usernames, contact details, often this stuff is not copied to any other medium.

And, sometimes I simply want to read back a chatlog of some other people, for instance in our skype dev channel. Noone can be expected to waste his time and bloat any wiki/forum with information extracted from chats, to save it from the 24h flush.

The user's content is sacred. Be careful with flushing.

> I think it's irresponsible to exchange this stuff (personal data involved) in a chatroom at all. And it's even more irresponsible to support it. How private are private chatrooms?

A private chatroom is as private as we make it. For my taste, it should be as private as a private message. In gtalk, a chat is as private as an email. If google reads our chats, it can just as well read our emails. If you encrypt your emails, then why not encrypt the chat as well?

In essence, a chat is no different from any other electronic conversation (mail, forum), except that you have much faster response cycles, and the density of non-temporary information is not as high.

> Maybe I use chat in another way 

We are getting closer :) 

Hey Pablo,

it's not a dumb question at all, the chat page is well hidden and quite difficult to find.

The only way I know of getting there is by clicking on the number of members who are online (top right of this screen) and then look for a button to the left called "enter the chat".

Alternatively, you can click here : Chat or use this link : https://www.bewelcome.org/chat

Happy chatting...

@pablo:

When we introduced the chat, we thought of it as some "beta feature". We wanted to make it possible to play with it, but we didn't want to guarantee for its usefulness. This is why we did not link it on the frontpage.

(I hope this is the correct explanation)

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@midsch:

Yes, the ads I get on gmail look very targeted.

My argument here is that chat is really not much different from email/pm. There is no logic in keeping personal messages, but saying we have to flush the chat for the member's own good.

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> And the longer the chatlogs get they harder to handle they are anyway.

in gtalk or skype I can easily search my chat logs. And, I often find useful information.

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> Yes, the ads I get on gmail look very targeted.

If we can make preferences for this, that are transparent and not too complicated, then people could decide what is kept or not. But, I am against flushing everything by default, in every chatroom. I don't think this is in the interest of our members.

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> PPS: Do we implent a special chat-donation box on the chat page (for extra server power, space, ...)?

We can come up with something like this, but for now we don't even know how much the chat will cost us. I think we don't need to be too afraid of it.

And, we can switch the chat off if we run into a shortage of server power.