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.


Quote Originally Posted by hoglahoo View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by kenneyty View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Ben325e View Post
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'.

Quote Originally Posted by Philadelph View Post
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.

Quote Originally Posted by Philadelph View Post
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.

Quote 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.