Thread: Discussion: Restoration Chat on IRC

Everyone who comes into the IRC on Tuesday evenings (US time) is immediately directed to the flashchat link so that they can join everyone else. So it's not like there ever really was a separate room for restoration talk and a room for b.s.

I prefer to just have a forum announcement like this: "Restorers are meeting in the chat room Thursday at such and such time"

06/22/08

OK It's time to move the Restoration chat into the new chat room, it seems to be stable and up and working, so lets give it a try this coming Tuesday night Just hit the chat icon at the top of the page on the new skin, if yer still using the old skin here is the link you need

Freenode Java applet IRC portal


See ya there Tuesday at 8:00pm EST
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07/02/08

It looks as though the Restore Chat is finally back on track... The changing chat rooms and unstable platforms bought the attendance down to just the 6-8 diehards... but the last 2 weeks has a steady increase again, I would like to again invite everyone to join us for the chat every Tuesday night in the new chat room at 8:00pm EST...
Last night was really good seeing about 15 members in the room at one time, for those of you that have questions about your restores there are some very experienced people stopping by to share information....


See ya all next Tuesday
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07/29/08

Restoration Chat Continues!!!! We will be moving the Restoration Chat back into the "Cave" or as others know it Flashchat
That way the main chat can be for those that just wanna visit and BS and those of us that want to talk Restoration can visit and BS in flash .... It just seems to work better in there, so lets move it back.......
Please feel free to join in, even if ya just wanna kick back and listen, or if you need some help with your own projects....
Restoration encompasses just about every aspect of Razordom from sanding to honing and some of the guys that hang out are pretty knowledgeable so it is a great time to pick their brains....

See ya there 8:00pm EST tonight and every Tuesday...


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I am going to re-point out the problem, we did this in the past in fact it was Alex who pointed out the problem of having restore and regular chat in the same room, so we moved it back into flash and kept it seperate...


Where it has stayed since... Granted at that time it was not as established as it is now where most people know that Tuesday's are Restore chat, day...
But again I am going to point out that we have combined it in the past and it did not work....

so has Doc's cave closed for good?

I am not Dave, but CGI:IRC - Web based IRC Client actually works, and without Java, too. I wonder it it would be worth giving it a shot. Otherwise, I would like to iterate my recommendation for an IRC client, e.g. Chatzilla: http://straightrazorpalace.com/gener...tml#post243034

One thing that is important to keep in mind is that given the technical level and resistance to change of the SRP population any solution that is only good in immediate or very near term is a bad one.
Even if they may not admit it, the truth is that most of the people in the restoration chat have financial interest that the community grows, or they'll be stuck with their beautiful restorations and have to scale down how many they make because there is not enough people to pay money for them.

SRP continues to grow and we should not only facilitate this, but also anticipate it and be prepared to handle it. Whoever has been in the Sunday chat recently would know that it has gone well beyond the size where much useful things can be accomplished. Most of it is people saying 'hi' to each other. Of course a newbie can still get help, but it is a bit intimidating to ask. Just think about it - when was the last time you enjoyed a party with a single conversation involving 30 people? The natural thing that happens is that it breaks to several smaller conversations with 2-5 people each.
The exact same thing happens in online chat.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Everyone who comes into the IRC on Tuesday evenings (US time) is immediately directed to the flashchat link so that they can join everyone else. So it's not like there ever really was a separate room for restoration talk and a room for b.s.

I prefer to just have a forum announcement like this: "Restorers are meeting in the chat room Thursday at such and such time"

Indeed, it serves no purpose to just redirect everybody from one room to another. Transitional periods when things are changing are one thing, but not long term.

Originally Posted by kenneyty

I think it's pretty rare that there are too many conversations going on at once. Usually we can all stay on one topic, and i really don't see the need for policing.

Actually reading the back logs I've seen more than once a person failing to grab the attention because everybody else is more interested talking about the kangaroo strop than explaining to a newbie the differences between a brand new dovo razor and one in the classifieds.

Originally Posted by Ben325e

I think most people are excited to answer questions about how to hold the razor when going ATG under your chin, or why you should strop with an X pattern, or why Straights give less irritation than Mach 3's.

I'll give a big +1 to Philadelph on this one.

That is true, but it's not what happens in practice. It would be nice if that were the case, but it happened even in the flash chat to the point that some people started to explicitly express their distaste from others socializing during 'resto hour'.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

1. Nostalgia
2. Glen has terrible computer skills
3. Doc would not enter the new IRC chat

Yes the flash chat worked for few people better than the irc java client, but that's a problem with their computers. I use chatzilla and it works really well. The flash is not an option at this point and this would probably force people, including Doc and Glen to use one of the better clients, or perhaps the one Robin mentioned will be much better than the current java one.
And I haven't had the motivation to figure out the sound in chatzilla, so it's silent for the most part, while I'd prefer it if it had an easy way to turn sound alerts on an off and I knew it.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

When a new member from Canada comes into the only chat room he knows and sees Floppyshoes there available to answer a question about Northern honing services but gets no reply because Dan is busy in resto chat, who does that help? I don't see a need for policing of a topic either. If Tuesday night is advertised as resto chat, then the people who want to talk about that stuff specifically will make a point to be there. The chat should then naturally go in that direction.

Now this is a problem of Dan being logged on in #srp without paying attention to it. It will be the same result if he'd just log on into the flash client, and go make a set of scales. For example this week nobody could talk to you in the restoration channel, because you decided not to join it. This was a the right thing to do if you're not planning to be participating there.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

I see it more as a time and place where you KNOW people will be there who have an interest in discussing a certain topic. No need for policing of that topic, etc. The situation seems similar to all kinds of talk about modern honing techniques and 75k edges being serrated too roughly seen through a 300x powered microscope when guys used to use an 8k and be happy with it.

Yes and the place for the last two weeks was #srp-resto, while #srp remained as the place for talking mail order brides, cognac, purchasing first razor etc.

Finally I don' t know if I mentioned this before, but would you prefer to have all threads in the forum be a single section without any organization. After all one can argue that whatever the current topic of interest is will stay on top.
It really works for a very small forum where there are 10 threads altogether and it'll be silly to make a section for each one, but for the size of SRP it would be a nightmare.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I am going to re-point out the problem, we did this in the past in fact it was Alex who pointed out the problem of having restore and regular chat in the same room, so we moved it back into flash and kept it seperate...

But again I am going to point out that we have combined it in the past and it did not work....

I can't say whether it will or will not work again. I just currently think that having two separate rooms IN IRC seems redundant and more confusing since you are dealing with all the same options/colors/sounds etc. The original reason that I did want it back in the cave was threefold:

1. I liked the cave better, different colors for different people, etc.
2. I had no good IRC client so didn't know anything at all about chatting in IRC
3. The stupid reason of 'nostalgia'. I (or someone else) started using the slogan from Karate Kid "Never Die" to refer to Flashchat. Flashchat it seems though, did in fact die.

Originally Posted by gugi

Even if they may not admit it, the truth is that most of the people in the restoration chat have financial interest that the community grows, or they'll be stuck with their beautiful restorations and have to scale down how many they make because there is not enough people to pay money for them.

I am one of those people, sure. Regardless having any restoration chat whatsoever hasn't helped me in terms of a sale. I might post something I'm selling, but it has yet to be profitable in any way.

SRP continues to grow and we should not only facilitate this, but also anticipate it and be prepared to handle it. Whoever has been in the Sunday chat recently would know that it has gone well beyond the size where much useful things can be accomplished. Most of it is people saying 'hi' to each other.

Very true. This happens in any chat though. In resto chat in particular I cannot recall one evening where cross-communicating wasn't going on. People say hi back and forth and then separate conversations break off. PMs happen. New members get ignored and so on. There is no getting around it no matter where we are.

Actually reading the back logs I've seen more than once a person failing to grab the attention because everybody else is more interested talking about the kangaroo strop than explaining to a newbie the differences between a brand new dovo razor and one in the classifieds.

Again, this will happen in any chat room no matter the size. People get ignored and/or people don't feel like talking about/commenting on everything everyone else wants to discuss/hear.

That is true, but it's not what happens in practice. It would be nice if that were the case, but it happened even in the flash chat to the point that some people started to explicitly express their distaste from others socializing during 'resto hour'.

Whether or not any of us likes this socializing in a themed chat, it happens EVERY WEEK. Yes, including last week with a separate IRC resto chat room. I was talking to a member through PM in the regular chat and he (in both rooms) commented on how there had been no mention of razors in the resto chat for a long length of time but they were instead just shooting the sh.t and discussing various random subjects. Nothing is ideal.

Now this is a problem of Dan being logged on in #srp without paying attention to it. It will be the same result if he'd just log on into the flash client, and go make a set of scales. For example this week nobody could talk to you in the restoration channel, because you decided not to join it. This was a the right thing to do if you're not planning to be participating there.

Correct, and there isn't much to be done about people not paying attention, but if a member is present in both rooms and only talking in one but ignoring the other, then it is something that could be avoided. I admit when Cave chat was still going, I would be logged into both but only pay attention to resto chat. Again, there is no perfect solution. Last week I had plenty of 'resto' chat in the main chat room.

Yes and the place for the last two weeks was #srp-resto, while #srp remained as the place for talking mail order brides, cognac, purchasing first razor etc.

Again, this would have been ideal, but it simply didn't happen that way Gugi and it never will. Non-razor topics were discussed in resto chat as I pointed out, and resto chat was discussed in the main chat.

Finally I don' t know if I mentioned this before, but would you prefer to have all threads in the forum be a single section without any organization. After all one can argue that whatever the current topic of interest is will stay on top.
It really works for a very small forum where there are 10 threads altogether and it'll be silly to make a section for each one, but for the size of SRP it would be a nightmare.

I really see no relevance there. A chat room isn't a forum and vice-versa. The chat room doesn't have thousands of 'threads' at the same time.

Lastly, I want to point out that the current IRC chat room was in fact a 'short term thing' for the new SRP chat. It still doesn't work for everyone. Certain people can't get in or don't know how, etc. It was a short term fix because no better long term chat solution had been found yet. So again– no perfect fix.

I don't know what to do about having a separate resto chat vs. having it in one room really. I just thought it unnecessary to have two IRC rooms and I already discussed that. I don't want to be blamed though when one room doesn't work out because there are too many members trying to chat. So again, there isn't a perfect way to do it but I still think the system for the last two weeks is the worst yet.

Why not sub the chat link to send you to the SRP chat or the SRP-RESTO chat... A link from SRP will make it easier for everyone to find... A lot of times I have to go to the normal chat to get the link to the flashchat. I just finished & shaved with my Firs Restored Razor, Thanx to the chat room (both) & the forums.


May I ask why DOC doesn't like the chat room SRP has now?

Look guys for me it was just what I started with and am most comfortable with nothing else. Plus I'm a grumpy old bear who has a hard time with change. I am not even happy about the new digital tv change over.

Originally Posted by Doc

Look guys for me it was just what I started with and am most comfortable with nothing else. Plus I'm a grumpy old bear who has a hard time with change. I am not even happy about the new digital tv change over.

Ah, nostalgia... Second level support... Those were the days...

Here is the deal. I hereby offer to set my alarm clock to 0300 hours CET, and walk everyone who needs a bit of help through setting up an IRC client. I can promise you that using Pidgin, you will get coloured nicks, sound, and smilies. See screenshot below. Separate windows for separate channels, too.

Reason? I am logged onto #srp and #srp-resto 24/7, but due to time zone challenges, I can never participate in the restoration chat, but I would like to be able to follow the conversations there nonetheless.

And as far as change is concerned: Yes you can.

Do you think Pidgin is one of the best? I'm not adverse to paying for an application.

I remember quite some time ago I felt the urge to get a chat client and I think I found something that was the uber chat client at the time... then I didn't really use it and then I switched to a new pc. I don't see it (of course I can't remember the name of it either) so it probably didn't make the migration.