A fair request. It simply slipped by us - there have been several things on the plate lately.

Sorry for missing that step.

What's a shoutbox?

Well, it's not quite a mop and it's not quite a puppet but oh man.... so to answer your question just decompose the word.

It's a unfortunate condition also known as "screaming vagina". Unfortunately, one of our female members gave it to one of our male members (heh, male member), but a quick shot of pennicillen cleared it up.

was it horizontal when it was screaming?

Actually that was a subtle attempt at humor, due to the quasi heated nature of this thread, in order to convey the unimportance of this feature to an insignificant TFP member.

Yes. It screamed "tbthtbhtthbhtbth". And it was Asian.

Shut up. You know you laughed.

Hell, I laughed.

If the shoutbox was here... I'd laugh in it and say tbth-tbth.

Have we really given this topic that much attention in one day?

Really?

What the fuck is wrong with us?

**CROMPSIN GRABS JUMPINJESUS' HEAD, SHAKING IT SIDE TO SIDE**

I WANT... NO... I NEED THE BOX... IT MAINTAINS THE CAREFUL EQUILIBRIUM IN MY SOUL... THE INTERSTITIAL CELLS THROUGHOUT MY VITAL ORGANS ARE LOADED WITH SHOUTBOX MACROMOLECULES. LOOK INTO MY EMPTY EYES AND KNOW THAT I CANNOT LIVE A MEANINGFUL EXISTENCE WITHOUT IT TO OCCUPY MY INNER MONOLOGUE... THAT I WANT TO RUB IT ALL UP ON MY SMOOTH SPOT AND PRAY THAT THE MOMENT LASTS FOREV...

**CROMPSIN PASSES OUT**

Not just one day. A quarter of it!

I really like the iPhone. I wasn't really 100% sure when it was first announced, but I had the chance to play around with one and decided that I'd like to get one. Here's the thing:I already have an iPod video. Why the hell would I want another iPod when I've already got an iPod and a cell phone?

Integration is important. While I love my iPod and my Samsung cell phone, it's a lot more simple when they are in one device in my pocket instead of two. Let's say I'm listening to Depeche Mode and I need to take a call. With the iPhone, I hit one button. I don't have to take off my headphones, pause my iPod, pull out my cell phone, and then answer. It's almost radically simple. It's convenient and I'm left wondering how I put up with my situation before I had it.

That's basically how I saw the integrated shoutbox. It was right there, as soon you you popped in to TFP, ready to go. No need to open an unstable and slow java window or to use a third party application. It's just there, and everyone is free to just dive in. I mean let's be honest, when you're in the irc chat, only a few people see it. I've never seen more than maybe 30 people, and of that maybe 10-15 active. Compare that to the shout box. Everyone who comes to the forum sees it, and they get a glimpse of those active members who have something to say without having to give it the context of a thread subject. If Giant Hamburger wants to entertain us, he bestows his juicy, delicious way of speaking without restraint. If Crompsin want's to remind us about his feelings concerning Vampires, Werwolves, and Cromp-ensteins, there you have it, a little slice of personality to greet you right on the front page. I even used the chat box from time to time and recall a wonderful conversation with Charlatan late at night (late for me, in the afternoon for him) where I left feeling like I'd helped Char feel a little closer to home.

Just food for thought. I'm feeling a bit under the weather, so I'll rest now.

you know its really scary to me when you and I agree on something Will hehehe

hope you feel better soon!!

Will creeps me out. He's all... collected upstairs.

That and I feel like he's trying to sell me an iPhone.

Which is a silly to me. Touchscreens are garbage.

Shoutbox was like stopping to say hi while going to the store.
Chat is its own errand.
I won't use chat. BTDT. That's my choice. Guess I gotta store all my smartass remarks in a box.
What Will said.

So I guess this thread is the new shoutbox, huh...?

nice post will. i can see that angle.

is there a way to host the shoutbox inside of something 'general discussion'? you don't see it from the main page, but the native simplicity is still there?

just a thought.

Willravels said it a lot better than I could.

He described to me his experience getting shot for christs sakes. If you dont want newbies to see someone sharing the details of an obviously painful life changing experience because it might turn them off, mebbe they're just not TFP Material.


I'm sad to see it go. Chat doesnt wanna work for me on my old POS computer.

*sigh*

Those are definitely NOT the kinds of things that were troubling in the shoutbox. Those sorts of things were the highlights of the shoutbox. In terms of newbies, the problem was the "chat" nature of the feature. The site is intended to be a mature, adult forum. That doesn't mean supressing our fun sides, but let's be honest here - Tilted Nonsense and Chat are the places for silliness, by and large. We don't want to be Nazis about this, but having a scrolling box that highlights that part of our nature gives the impression that it is a huge part of what TFP is, when it's not. We like to be silly, but adult conversation is our differentiator.

I sent this PM to Will earlier tonight, but given some of the more recent replies, I thought I'd share my message to him with everyone:

Here's what I'd like to have people take from this thread:

The people who work as staff here aren't perfect. They give of their time and try to make good decisions about how to encourage the site to grow according to its owner's vision. Sometimes good decisions make people unhappy, but that doesn't mean that we're trying to set up adversarial relationships with our users. The shoutbox thing is decided for now, and we want to see what direction several aspects of the site will take in its absence. That doesn't mean that we won't continue to look for even better solutions in the future.

If you have suggestions, please share them - in a thread, by PM, whatever. But when you're doing so, please try to remember that we put a LOT of hours and a LOT of ourselves into this place. When we feel like we are being attacked or jerked around, we can get defensive. We're only human.

LOL, oh yeah! I'd forgotten about that.

To uber and all moderators, supermods, admins, and the owner:
I hope you don't have the impression that anyone expects perfection. I'm not even sure what that would look like. We expect that you'll try to do your best, and I've never seen anyone do less. We may not always agree on what's best, I suppose, but that hardly means there is anyone to blame if someone thinks a mistake has been made.

Speaking briefly to the specific case of the shoutbox:
I'm for all intents and purposes an adult. I eat salad, I read magazines before painting my house and decorating, and I own books without pictures. I'm also pretty silly, though. I don't necessarily think that packing up my legos means that I can't be a goofball from time to time. As a matter of fact, if I'm not at work (or even sometimes at work), I'm usually goofy. It's my nature. I suspect it's in the nature of a lot of people on TFP. If I'm talking about how much I love farting in the chat box, I would hope that wouldn't keep someone from clicking on Tilted Knowledge. I know it would only serve to make me feel comfortable if I were visiting. Yes, some people judge a book by its cover... but the people in the chat box are all members, and they're almost always very active members, so isn't that judgment reasonable? I mean I don't just see fun and silliness in nonsense or humor. I see it anywhere from General Discussion to Sexuality to even Politics.

I guess my question would be this: if you were chatting with friends and someone asked you to be serious, would you feel welcome? This isn't asked to be a piss ant to anyone who may have come to the decision to shut down the chat, I just want to make sure that we take everyone's impressions on such a thing.

How about this? TFP has plenty of time tested rules and regulations. If people break those, then the moderation staff is responsible for doing what they can to make the situation right. I don't remember anything at all saying that the chatbox can't be silly, and TFP has silliness in all sections, of course, so what is this really about? If the staff or whoever makes the decisions wanted people to know that the chatbox was not to be used to be goofy, maybe you should let people know.

TFP is not a democracy. Otherwise a poll would have been set up to measure members' attitudes about the Shoutbox before action was taken, etc. Since that's not the case, I think it's about time we all built a freaking bridge and got over this petty shit.