Live chat.. Chris read this!

[Rob MacKay]

Why don’t ya just use http://tinychat.com/ with a password set room where you get the password from the forums.

That will give you a good idea as to if people are actually want to get involved. once you have run it for a month or so – depending on the results – you can find a better solution if it is not working.

[chrisburton]

@robskiwarrior, I forgot about tinychat, good idea.

[rickylamerz]

First of all, I like the idea of a chat. I found that sometimes when I need little assistance It’s easy to have a place to go to. And just ask if sum1 has some advice to get you further.
Forums work, but not as well as chat for certain things.

I have to agree on Soap that not doing something because it attracts hackers is not really a good decision. You don’t have to script your own chat. There are many solutions. But setting up an IRC of which the instruction on how to connect are explained on a page should work imho. And you could use applets to make it inline in the website.

JAVA applets that can connect to an IRC channel which you will create on Freenode.
I’m no expert by all means but I wouldn’t care to dive in deeper and even make the instructions.

What do you think Chris? Do you want to give it a try. It won’t strain the server or cause security issues.

[gno]

@ChristopherBurton, My only point is that a live chat itself is not a worse threat than a forum or comments on a blog. SQL injections can happen in any database based application and it is not an issue which is related to just live chats. A chat on a site like this would only be an increase in the attackable surface – while I agree that it is something to consider, I still think that your initial argument is plain wrong. Big sites like this attracts hackers – live chat or not.

I still believe that the best solution for this is a good old plain IRC channel. It would not be a security issue, at all. And besides that, it is an enjoyable technology to use. Simple and unchanged for a lot of years – for a reason – it just works. Its even free…

[chrisburton]

@gno – my initial debate is exactly what you’re stating, just rewording it.

[gno]

@ChristopherBurton, then I must say that I fail to understand how that would be an argument against a chat service?

—

I do not believe that a open, anonymous, on-the-site live chat is a good idea. Anyone can register on this site, and that is the main reason; People coming here would have a lot of trust to the people who offer them help – partly because they’re being nice, and partly because this site have credibility. That trust could easily be abused by evil-minded guys – which the moderators have no chance of keeping away.

No technical solution would be able to protect the users against this.

I understand the desire for a chat room as alternative to the forums. A chat has obvious advantages, but it has a lot of downsides as well. The best way to do this would be an IRC channel. There is an initial barrier for people – they have to setup a client and join the channel and the network first. That keeps the worst kind of users away and those going there to get help will more likely stay and may even help others in the future.

[soap]

Any of sort of abuse by evil-minded guys is easily avoided by not giving out personal information.

[chrisburton]

A live chat is the topic of this post, right? I could be wrong but, I think that is why I was making a point that a CSS-Tricks chat would attract hackers. After reading the blog post, Chat V2 and focusing on the vulnerabilities that Chris mentioned and was the reason why the demo was taken down, was the main point of what I was trying to say or did say. However you want to take it.

A chat on a site like this would only be an increase in the attackable surface – while I agree that it is something to consider

That is my main argument. You’re debating the same thing you agree with.
I never said, “having a big site made it worse”, but having a large scale website will be more prone to attacks. It’s a fact.

[gno]

@ChristopherBurton, My apologies for the misunderstandings. My point was just that a chat is not more vulnerable than anything else from a technical point of view – which was what I thought you said it was.

@soap, The average Joe can be fooled… I’m not saying that it should be the main argument against a live chat on the website, but it should be one of the major concerns. It was mainly part of the misunderstood discussion between me and Christopher.

[chrisburton]

@gno – haha no apology needed. I think we both may have been confused with each others point.

I agree that anyone can be fooled and nothing is hack proof.

[Rob MacKay]

a forum where people apologise for misunderstandings? Can’t we get some kind of award for this?

[soap]

^ This is very unusual. Shouldn’t you be calling him a trash newb or something?

[noahgelman]

Good day to you sir
*Tips hat and adjusts monocle*

[gno]

@Robskiwarrior & @soap – I know that I haven’t been around too long, but I cannot recall any situations where people have flamed one another on this forum? ;-)

While we’re at the apologies – I’m afraid that we’ve buried the original posts intent in the safety discussion…

I think it would be awesome to have an IRC channel (or something similar) where the community could help each other out and just hang out when we need a little time off from the dirty work ;-) So – I’d like to know what are our chieftain @ChrisCoyier is thinking…? :-)

[Chris Coyier]

a forum where people apologise for misunderstandings? Can’t we get some kind of award for this?

Hahaha.

Anyway.

Where we are at on this is I’m not going to do anything until something I feel is a perfect solution comes along. For some reason IRC turns me off and I haven’t seen anything else yet that does it for me. If someone wants to do some research on it, go for it and let me know. What I’d be looking for is

1) Embeddable into other page
2) Good design, possibly customizeable
3) Not incredibly expensive but could be paid

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